[Music]
and
[Music]
pummeled with tank fire mortar rounds
riots for breath women who tried to
commit suicide by setting themselves on
fire
many many women were dying in childbirth
I was kidnapped by Qaddafi’s troops
there was no place to hide
[Music]
so I was 26 the first time I went to
Afghanistan and I had been living in
India at the time and I had a roommate
who went to Afghanistan under the
Taliban and he came back and he said you
know you’re a woman you should go to
Afghanistan and photograph women living
under the Taliban because no one’s doing
it and he didn’t tell me that
photography was illegal at the time that
you couldn’t photograph any living thing
and that there was no American Embassy
and that the only governing body was the
Taliban which was ruled by Sharia law uh
but I was 26 and I didn’t care and so I
went and I took some pictures of women I
kept my cameras in my bag and I ran
around to people’s homes and I went to
the hospitals
this was a woman’s hospital in 2000
there was no medicine very few doctors
this was a woman in labor this is a very
typical scene on the streets of Kabul
this was the capital at the time there
were almost no cars women beggars were
really the only women you would ever see
on the street any form of entertainment
was illegal there was no music no
television no cell phones so when I
would go to Afghanistan at the time I
would literally fall off the face of the
planet I would have no idea what was
happening outside of Afghanistan this
scene happened I was out at a refugee
camp because there was a drought in
Herat which was Western Afghanistan and
I was with my driver and he said madam I
have to go early because my brother is
getting married and I said great let’s
go to your brother’s wedding
so he took me and I brought one camera
one lens and I hung out and I had been
on a street like the picture you had
just seen and we descended down these
stairs and the Titanic was blasting and
men and women were dancing together and
this was all under the Taliban in secret
about nine years later National
Geographic assigned me to photograph
women and after
Stan and I spent about two years
photographing and the changes that had
been made were astonishing to me I had
been working pretty much consistently in
Afghanistan since 2000 so I went almost
every year and my last trip was about
five months ago this is a wedding the
man on the right is the father of the
groom and he is a filmmaker in
Afghanistan this is a typical scene of a
midwife this is in Badakhshan province
and that province has very few roads so
many many women died in childbirth in
Afghanistan mostly because of the lack
of access to hospitals and doctors so
what you see here is a women a midwife
from Merlin and she would go out into
very remote villages and they would make
an announcement at the mosque and
pregnant women and women with young
children would come and meet with her
and after spending about two weeks in
Badakhshan province I was driving back
to Faizabad which was the capital and I
noticed these two women on the side of
the mountain and I said that’s strange
there’s no man with those women and
anyone who’s worked extensively in
Afghanistan knows that there’s always a
man with a woman so we stopped the car
and dr. ziba who was my translator an
amazing Afghan woman she jumped out and
we ran up the mountain and she said
what’s going on and the woman in on the
right was in labor and her water had
just broken and they had rented a car
and her husband’s first wife had died in
childbirth and he was so determined to
not have a second wife died in
childbirth that he rented this car and
they were driving from their village to
fisa Baba Capital and their car broke
down and so I said get in my car and
I’ll take you to the hospital and they
said we can’t we need the permission of
her husband and so I said doctor zebra
go find the husband unfortunately there
was one road that led throughout the
whole problem so she took our car and
she found the husband and they all came
in my car and she delivered and everyone
always asked me if I took if I have
pictures of her delivering and I stopped
photographing at the point that I left
them that I put them in my car because I
changed the story as a journalist and I
didn’t feel like it was ethical to keep
photographing
many women in Afghanistan end up in
prison simply for asking for a divorce
for doing things that in the West we
would see as not justifiable to end up
in prison this is my Dahal she was
married at a very young age to a man who
was decades older than her he was
handicapped so every day her duties as a
wife or to bathe him and to take care of
him and feed him when she was 21 she
asked for a divorce and she was thrown
in prison by his brothers this is a
young woman women in Afghanistan who are
unhappy or who are shamed they don’t
take a gun and try and commit suicide
the way that we would try to or that’s
more typical in the West they set
themselves on fire and many of those
women don’t die so I did a series for
the New York Times on women who tried to
commit suicide by setting themselves on
fire this young woman had been accused
by her neighbors of stealing and she was
so ashamed that she tried to kill
herself and she died a few days after
that picture um with the Americans in
Afghanistan one thing they tried to do
was train up a police force of women and
this is a shooting range outside of
Kabul education has really picked up in
Kabul that’s something when I first used
to go there were secret girls schools in
people’s homes hidden from the Taliban
and now you see women graduating there’s
a women’s boxing team this is a woman in
Parliament they’re women in Parliament
sorry
there are soap operas with women and
women actresses this is a soap opera set
in Kabul this is Trina
she’s an actress she did soap operas and
she was also in some movies so in 2009
and 2010 I accompanied the Marines
Female Engagement teams throughout
Helmand province this was a program
started by the Marines to have American
women engage Afghan women because many
of the Marines all the Marines operating
in Helmand province were
and there was a whole 50% of the society
they couldn’t they couldn’t engage and
they couldn’t go into people’s homes so
they brought women in and they had them
talk to Afghan women look at them for
basic medical treatment but it was
fascinating for me because I had been
embedding with the military for many
many years but I was always the only
woman so it was the first time that I
was able to be around women to go around
and see how they operate in this hostile
environment this is a female Blackhawk
pilot Jesse and choose to go in and pick
up the injured she was working with a
medevac team this is some training this
is all in Helmand province cleaning
their guns relaxing at night and it was
the first time you know usually when I
am bed with the military there’s no
place for me to sleep it’s always this
big crisis where’s the where’s the
female journalists gonna sleep and so I
finally was able to sleep on a normal
cot with a bunch of women really fun and
I loved seeing them still try and do
their makeup and be feminine even on the
front lines and we patrolled and we were
shot at and this was before 2013 when
women were allowed on the front lines so
this is all in 2010 I love this picture
in 2009 I was given a McArthur
fellowship and I wanted to focus on
maternal mortality and why women died in
childbirth and so and it’s a body of
work that I have been doing now for
about five years and I went to Sierra
Leone to photograph in the mob Baraka
government hospital it was a place that
I knew many many women were dying in
childbirth and I went there one day and
met mama see say she was a woman who was
pregnant with twins she gave birth to
the first twin in the village and the
second twin wouldn’t come out so she
took a canoe across the river and there
was an ambulance waiting for her across
the river and she drove about four hours
across bumpy roads to get to the
hospital
and this is when I met her she had
delivered the first baby about 24 hours
earlier she was so scared and tired to
push because she was just exhausted and
she finally gave birth and the baby was
I thought was stillborn but the nurses
spent about 45 minutes resuscitating the
baby and they have very little there
they don’t have traditional machines
like we do that can oxygen and
everything they’re literally smacking
the baby and trying to bring the baby
back to life in that time mama si se
started bleeding I thought there was
something wrong but I’m not a doctor I’m
just a photojournalist and so I kept
asking why she bleeding so much and they
were just mopping up the blood and
saying she’s fine finally I went to go
get the doctor and he was in surgery and
when I came back her blood pressure was
down to 60 over 40 they picked her up
and carried her across the hospital
where the doctor was there was one
doctor in the entire province and by the
time she got there she died this is her
sister who was also a midwife who had
arranged to send her that ambulance
because she didn’t want her to die this
is the mother finding out that her
daughter has just died and this is in
the ambulance and I went home with her
body and photographed the rituals
surrounding her death and her burial so
two years later I got a call from
Doctors Without Borders MSF and they
said we saw the story you did and since
then we’ve put five ambulances in BO
Province in this one province next to
that province I’d been in and they offer
24 hour emergency service to women in
Sierra Leone in that province and they
gave each of the small clinics in the
villages a radio and so when a woman
went into the clinic with complications
they could call for an ambulance and
they said with that we’ve reduced the
maternal mortality rate by 60%
[Music]
[Music]
yeah
[Music]
maybe outside the degree you died or
after when China’s arching do you die
but we are really still alive so this is
an example of feeling like some don’t
survive some
[Music]
when it’s lit
[Music]
[Music]
can you talk about maternal health and
Sierra Leone
a lot of women died in childbirth here
in this country
yes it’s happening though we are having
this feared
it’s not due to certain constraints
because some people are still living a
distance even East if it’s not amazing
how can people listening transport so
receive so gets to a place we are the
pen mark Center is on the other clinic
is the entity we are doing now I got
away again
[Music]
ah
[Music]
[Music]
would you
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
in 2011 it was February of 2011 and I
had watched the Arab Spring unfold from
on TV while I was sitting in Iraq and
then I was in Afghanistan and then
Bahrain and I was always in the wrong
place and so I called the New York Times
and I said I’m going to Libya whether
you want to send me or not
and so I went to Libya and like most
journalists I crossed illegally from
Egypt into eastern Libya and that was
really the only way to do it because any
journalist who wants to cover an
uprising the government generally
doesn’t want journalists there so you
have to sneak in so when I got there it
was very euphoric people were really
celebrating the uprising a parallel
government was being set up there were
demonstrations people were really happy
they thought Qaddafi was going to fall
quickly they called people to fight
against Gaddafi’s troops and they were
clearly untrained with doctors and
juniors teachers learning how to use
weapons immigrants were fleeing people
who had gone to Libya to work we’re
trying to get boats out of the country
they felt that the fighting was imminent
and in Benghazi there was really an air
of tension and about a week after I got
there some rebels started pushing
forward towards the front line and a
handful of photographers it’s always the
crazy photographers who go forward we
started moving forward with Gaddafi’s
troops we ended up on the front line
this is Rosslyn oof what you see in the
background is
oil refinery and we followed them as
cities fell from Qaddafi’s hands into
rebel hands they went in they would
shoot out pictures of Qaddafi go into
homes the fighting was really
disproportionate Qadhafi had a trained
military and we were with the rebels and
so this is an example of we were on the
frontline it was one road that sliced
through the desert from west to east and
one day we were on the frontline when a
helicopter gunship came in directly
above us and started spraying the ground
around us with 50 caliber bullets like
this big and they had to fight back with
Kalashnikovs some some of the soldiers
some of the rebels were throwing rocks
up into the air many times they just
turn around and fled when Qadhafi’s
military approached we had been sort of
spoiled by being with the American
military the Marines in Afghanistan and
Iraq and it was very different this
particular day we were being pummeled
with tank fire mortar rounds we would
just follow the frontline as they pushed
back and forward we were really trying
to get a sense of what was happening and
it was before the no-fly zone was put in
place so as journalists we really wanted
to show what was happening so that while
while the no-fly zone was being
deliberated we can provide a first-hand
picture of what was happening on the
ground the rebels were really getting
injured and killed around us the
fighting was very very intense there was
no place to hide we would be on the
frontline and we would hear the hum of
an aircraft and you would literally just
hope that the bomb didn’t land on top of
you cower and fear this particular bomb
landed about a hundred two hundred feet
from where we were standing and we
pushed forward with them as they took
more ground and several days after that
I took this picture I was kidnapped by
Qaddafi’s troops with three other
journalists for the New York Times so
that was the last picture in that series
luckily I had a premonition that
something might happen so I sent a hard
drive out with a with a colleague and
said if I get taken please send this to
my agency and that’s how I was able to
salvage all my pictures
last year I wanted to cover what was
happening in Syria but my family begged
me not to go into Syria
so I started covering the refugee crisis
and I’ve made eight trips to the region
to Turkey Jordan Lebanon northern Iraq
and I did go once into Syria and so this
is a collection of photos of the Syrian
refugees these are refugees streaming
into northern Iraq and this is them
waiting for handouts in northern Iraq
after arriving this is a food
distribution in zetha t when there were
riots for bread this is a family
arriving in za to D for the first time
and when they’re there getting
registered with the United Nations and
za to D and a family sleeping outside at
dawn in Iraq this is a funeral for a
rebel fighter and they’re cooking the
body was still in Syria but this is the
family cooking and people were living in
caves and Lebanon I went back to these
caves several months ago and the
families have all been moved into
makeshift camps there are no camps in
Lebanon because Lebanese government is
does not want formal camp set up this is
at a bread distribution in Zaatari and
these are the camps on the Syrian side
of the border people were living in raw
sewage there were no NGOs working there
except ihh Turkish NGO at the time and
this is in Syria that he was a former
fighter and he was living in a school
with his family and this is a outside of
a Smuggler’s village in Turkey and I was
waiting to try and photograph the exodus
of refugees coming out of Syria and it’s
a picture that’s very very difficult to
get as a photographer now because all of
the neighboring countries have really
shut down their borders and so I stood
outside of the smugglers village because
I knew that they were crossing there in
every hour so someone would come up to
me and say get out of here we’re going
to kill you
and one guy came up to me and he said
I’m gonna go get my knife and another
guy came up to me and said just wait
till dark
because when dark comes you’ll see all
the refugees so I put my cameras in my
back
and I waited and of course a dark they
all started streaming out and this is a
family living in a in a camp across from
a formal camp in Turkey they were
literally living under the trees and
this is that same camp I just wanted to
show you a few on assignment pictures
because I think it’s funny this was me
in 2001 in Pakistan misses me and
Fallujah crossing illegally into Darfur
to cover the war in Darfur we had to
walk for three kilometres most of that
through Wadi s this is we had lived on
the back of this pickup truck for five
days driving through the desert and
Darfur this is the Korengal Valley in
Afghanistan I was embedded with the
173rd that’s me and my colleague in
Afghanistan that’s me in that same
colleague sort of like being an actor
and this is us hiding in that silo and
Libya on the front line and this is ass
on the front line that’s me with Tyler
Hicks and we were taken together
yuriko’s revin Nikki so Becky and this
is an example of where we stayed
typically in Libya on the front line
people Libyans would just open their
homes to journalists who were there and
for example in this particular house
there were 17 journalists sleeping and
every night we got a knock on the door
at about 6 o’clock and it was a
ten-year-old Libyan boy and he would
come with a giant tray of food and just
set it down and leave and so the women
who were still in the village would cook
for us every night and on the upper
right is Anthony Shadid he’s a colleague
and he died in Syria last year of an
asthma attack and that’s it
[Applause]
[Music]
you
and
[Music]
pummeled with tank fire mortar rounds
riots for breath women who tried to
commit suicide by setting themselves on
fire
many many women were dying in childbirth
I was kidnapped by Qaddafi’s troops
there was no place to hide
[Music]
so I was 26 the first time I went to
Afghanistan and I had been living in
India at the time and I had a roommate
who went to Afghanistan under the
Taliban and he came back and he said you
know you’re a woman you should go to
Afghanistan and photograph women living
under the Taliban because no one’s doing
it and he didn’t tell me that
photography was illegal at the time that
you couldn’t photograph any living thing
and that there was no American Embassy
and that the only governing body was the
Taliban which was ruled by Sharia law uh
but I was 26 and I didn’t care and so I
went and I took some pictures of women I
kept my cameras in my bag and I ran
around to people’s homes and I went to
the hospitals
this was a woman’s hospital in 2000
there was no medicine very few doctors
this was a woman in labor this is a very
typical scene on the streets of Kabul
this was the capital at the time there
were almost no cars women beggars were
really the only women you would ever see
on the street any form of entertainment
was illegal there was no music no
television no cell phones so when I
would go to Afghanistan at the time I
would literally fall off the face of the
planet I would have no idea what was
happening outside of Afghanistan this
scene happened I was out at a refugee
camp because there was a drought in
Herat which was Western Afghanistan and
I was with my driver and he said madam I
have to go early because my brother is
getting married and I said great let’s
go to your brother’s wedding
so he took me and I brought one camera
one lens and I hung out and I had been
on a street like the picture you had
just seen and we descended down these
stairs and the Titanic was blasting and
men and women were dancing together and
this was all under the Taliban in secret
about nine years later National
Geographic assigned me to photograph
women and after
Stan and I spent about two years
photographing and the changes that had
been made were astonishing to me I had
been working pretty much consistently in
Afghanistan since 2000 so I went almost
every year and my last trip was about
five months ago this is a wedding the
man on the right is the father of the
groom and he is a filmmaker in
Afghanistan this is a typical scene of a
midwife this is in Badakhshan province
and that province has very few roads so
many many women died in childbirth in
Afghanistan mostly because of the lack
of access to hospitals and doctors so
what you see here is a women a midwife
from Merlin and she would go out into
very remote villages and they would make
an announcement at the mosque and
pregnant women and women with young
children would come and meet with her
and after spending about two weeks in
Badakhshan province I was driving back
to Faizabad which was the capital and I
noticed these two women on the side of
the mountain and I said that’s strange
there’s no man with those women and
anyone who’s worked extensively in
Afghanistan knows that there’s always a
man with a woman so we stopped the car
and dr. ziba who was my translator an
amazing Afghan woman she jumped out and
we ran up the mountain and she said
what’s going on and the woman in on the
right was in labor and her water had
just broken and they had rented a car
and her husband’s first wife had died in
childbirth and he was so determined to
not have a second wife died in
childbirth that he rented this car and
they were driving from their village to
fisa Baba Capital and their car broke
down and so I said get in my car and
I’ll take you to the hospital and they
said we can’t we need the permission of
her husband and so I said doctor zebra
go find the husband unfortunately there
was one road that led throughout the
whole problem so she took our car and
she found the husband and they all came
in my car and she delivered and everyone
always asked me if I took if I have
pictures of her delivering and I stopped
photographing at the point that I left
them that I put them in my car because I
changed the story as a journalist and I
didn’t feel like it was ethical to keep
photographing
many women in Afghanistan end up in
prison simply for asking for a divorce
for doing things that in the West we
would see as not justifiable to end up
in prison this is my Dahal she was
married at a very young age to a man who
was decades older than her he was
handicapped so every day her duties as a
wife or to bathe him and to take care of
him and feed him when she was 21 she
asked for a divorce and she was thrown
in prison by his brothers this is a
young woman women in Afghanistan who are
unhappy or who are shamed they don’t
take a gun and try and commit suicide
the way that we would try to or that’s
more typical in the West they set
themselves on fire and many of those
women don’t die so I did a series for
the New York Times on women who tried to
commit suicide by setting themselves on
fire this young woman had been accused
by her neighbors of stealing and she was
so ashamed that she tried to kill
herself and she died a few days after
that picture um with the Americans in
Afghanistan one thing they tried to do
was train up a police force of women and
this is a shooting range outside of
Kabul education has really picked up in
Kabul that’s something when I first used
to go there were secret girls schools in
people’s homes hidden from the Taliban
and now you see women graduating there’s
a women’s boxing team this is a woman in
Parliament they’re women in Parliament
sorry
there are soap operas with women and
women actresses this is a soap opera set
in Kabul this is Trina
she’s an actress she did soap operas and
she was also in some movies so in 2009
and 2010 I accompanied the Marines
Female Engagement teams throughout
Helmand province this was a program
started by the Marines to have American
women engage Afghan women because many
of the Marines all the Marines operating
in Helmand province were
and there was a whole 50% of the society
they couldn’t they couldn’t engage and
they couldn’t go into people’s homes so
they brought women in and they had them
talk to Afghan women look at them for
basic medical treatment but it was
fascinating for me because I had been
embedding with the military for many
many years but I was always the only
woman so it was the first time that I
was able to be around women to go around
and see how they operate in this hostile
environment this is a female Blackhawk
pilot Jesse and choose to go in and pick
up the injured she was working with a
medevac team this is some training this
is all in Helmand province cleaning
their guns relaxing at night and it was
the first time you know usually when I
am bed with the military there’s no
place for me to sleep it’s always this
big crisis where’s the where’s the
female journalists gonna sleep and so I
finally was able to sleep on a normal
cot with a bunch of women really fun and
I loved seeing them still try and do
their makeup and be feminine even on the
front lines and we patrolled and we were
shot at and this was before 2013 when
women were allowed on the front lines so
this is all in 2010 I love this picture
in 2009 I was given a McArthur
fellowship and I wanted to focus on
maternal mortality and why women died in
childbirth and so and it’s a body of
work that I have been doing now for
about five years and I went to Sierra
Leone to photograph in the mob Baraka
government hospital it was a place that
I knew many many women were dying in
childbirth and I went there one day and
met mama see say she was a woman who was
pregnant with twins she gave birth to
the first twin in the village and the
second twin wouldn’t come out so she
took a canoe across the river and there
was an ambulance waiting for her across
the river and she drove about four hours
across bumpy roads to get to the
hospital
and this is when I met her she had
delivered the first baby about 24 hours
earlier she was so scared and tired to
push because she was just exhausted and
she finally gave birth and the baby was
I thought was stillborn but the nurses
spent about 45 minutes resuscitating the
baby and they have very little there
they don’t have traditional machines
like we do that can oxygen and
everything they’re literally smacking
the baby and trying to bring the baby
back to life in that time mama si se
started bleeding I thought there was
something wrong but I’m not a doctor I’m
just a photojournalist and so I kept
asking why she bleeding so much and they
were just mopping up the blood and
saying she’s fine finally I went to go
get the doctor and he was in surgery and
when I came back her blood pressure was
down to 60 over 40 they picked her up
and carried her across the hospital
where the doctor was there was one
doctor in the entire province and by the
time she got there she died this is her
sister who was also a midwife who had
arranged to send her that ambulance
because she didn’t want her to die this
is the mother finding out that her
daughter has just died and this is in
the ambulance and I went home with her
body and photographed the rituals
surrounding her death and her burial so
two years later I got a call from
Doctors Without Borders MSF and they
said we saw the story you did and since
then we’ve put five ambulances in BO
Province in this one province next to
that province I’d been in and they offer
24 hour emergency service to women in
Sierra Leone in that province and they
gave each of the small clinics in the
villages a radio and so when a woman
went into the clinic with complications
they could call for an ambulance and
they said with that we’ve reduced the
maternal mortality rate by 60%
[Music]
[Music]
yeah
[Music]
maybe outside the degree you died or
after when China’s arching do you die
but we are really still alive so this is
an example of feeling like some don’t
survive some
[Music]
when it’s lit
[Music]
[Music]
can you talk about maternal health and
Sierra Leone
a lot of women died in childbirth here
in this country
yes it’s happening though we are having
this feared
it’s not due to certain constraints
because some people are still living a
distance even East if it’s not amazing
how can people listening transport so
receive so gets to a place we are the
pen mark Center is on the other clinic
is the entity we are doing now I got
away again
[Music]
ah
[Music]
[Music]
would you
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
in 2011 it was February of 2011 and I
had watched the Arab Spring unfold from
on TV while I was sitting in Iraq and
then I was in Afghanistan and then
Bahrain and I was always in the wrong
place and so I called the New York Times
and I said I’m going to Libya whether
you want to send me or not
and so I went to Libya and like most
journalists I crossed illegally from
Egypt into eastern Libya and that was
really the only way to do it because any
journalist who wants to cover an
uprising the government generally
doesn’t want journalists there so you
have to sneak in so when I got there it
was very euphoric people were really
celebrating the uprising a parallel
government was being set up there were
demonstrations people were really happy
they thought Qaddafi was going to fall
quickly they called people to fight
against Gaddafi’s troops and they were
clearly untrained with doctors and
juniors teachers learning how to use
weapons immigrants were fleeing people
who had gone to Libya to work we’re
trying to get boats out of the country
they felt that the fighting was imminent
and in Benghazi there was really an air
of tension and about a week after I got
there some rebels started pushing
forward towards the front line and a
handful of photographers it’s always the
crazy photographers who go forward we
started moving forward with Gaddafi’s
troops we ended up on the front line
this is Rosslyn oof what you see in the
background is
oil refinery and we followed them as
cities fell from Qaddafi’s hands into
rebel hands they went in they would
shoot out pictures of Qaddafi go into
homes the fighting was really
disproportionate Qadhafi had a trained
military and we were with the rebels and
so this is an example of we were on the
frontline it was one road that sliced
through the desert from west to east and
one day we were on the frontline when a
helicopter gunship came in directly
above us and started spraying the ground
around us with 50 caliber bullets like
this big and they had to fight back with
Kalashnikovs some some of the soldiers
some of the rebels were throwing rocks
up into the air many times they just
turn around and fled when Qadhafi’s
military approached we had been sort of
spoiled by being with the American
military the Marines in Afghanistan and
Iraq and it was very different this
particular day we were being pummeled
with tank fire mortar rounds we would
just follow the frontline as they pushed
back and forward we were really trying
to get a sense of what was happening and
it was before the no-fly zone was put in
place so as journalists we really wanted
to show what was happening so that while
while the no-fly zone was being
deliberated we can provide a first-hand
picture of what was happening on the
ground the rebels were really getting
injured and killed around us the
fighting was very very intense there was
no place to hide we would be on the
frontline and we would hear the hum of
an aircraft and you would literally just
hope that the bomb didn’t land on top of
you cower and fear this particular bomb
landed about a hundred two hundred feet
from where we were standing and we
pushed forward with them as they took
more ground and several days after that
I took this picture I was kidnapped by
Qaddafi’s troops with three other
journalists for the New York Times so
that was the last picture in that series
luckily I had a premonition that
something might happen so I sent a hard
drive out with a with a colleague and
said if I get taken please send this to
my agency and that’s how I was able to
salvage all my pictures
last year I wanted to cover what was
happening in Syria but my family begged
me not to go into Syria
so I started covering the refugee crisis
and I’ve made eight trips to the region
to Turkey Jordan Lebanon northern Iraq
and I did go once into Syria and so this
is a collection of photos of the Syrian
refugees these are refugees streaming
into northern Iraq and this is them
waiting for handouts in northern Iraq
after arriving this is a food
distribution in zetha t when there were
riots for bread this is a family
arriving in za to D for the first time
and when they’re there getting
registered with the United Nations and
za to D and a family sleeping outside at
dawn in Iraq this is a funeral for a
rebel fighter and they’re cooking the
body was still in Syria but this is the
family cooking and people were living in
caves and Lebanon I went back to these
caves several months ago and the
families have all been moved into
makeshift camps there are no camps in
Lebanon because Lebanese government is
does not want formal camp set up this is
at a bread distribution in Zaatari and
these are the camps on the Syrian side
of the border people were living in raw
sewage there were no NGOs working there
except ihh Turkish NGO at the time and
this is in Syria that he was a former
fighter and he was living in a school
with his family and this is a outside of
a Smuggler’s village in Turkey and I was
waiting to try and photograph the exodus
of refugees coming out of Syria and it’s
a picture that’s very very difficult to
get as a photographer now because all of
the neighboring countries have really
shut down their borders and so I stood
outside of the smugglers village because
I knew that they were crossing there in
every hour so someone would come up to
me and say get out of here we’re going
to kill you
and one guy came up to me and he said
I’m gonna go get my knife and another
guy came up to me and said just wait
till dark
because when dark comes you’ll see all
the refugees so I put my cameras in my
back
and I waited and of course a dark they
all started streaming out and this is a
family living in a in a camp across from
a formal camp in Turkey they were
literally living under the trees and
this is that same camp I just wanted to
show you a few on assignment pictures
because I think it’s funny this was me
in 2001 in Pakistan misses me and
Fallujah crossing illegally into Darfur
to cover the war in Darfur we had to
walk for three kilometres most of that
through Wadi s this is we had lived on
the back of this pickup truck for five
days driving through the desert and
Darfur this is the Korengal Valley in
Afghanistan I was embedded with the
173rd that’s me and my colleague in
Afghanistan that’s me in that same
colleague sort of like being an actor
and this is us hiding in that silo and
Libya on the front line and this is ass
on the front line that’s me with Tyler
Hicks and we were taken together
yuriko’s revin Nikki so Becky and this
is an example of where we stayed
typically in Libya on the front line
people Libyans would just open their
homes to journalists who were there and
for example in this particular house
there were 17 journalists sleeping and
every night we got a knock on the door
at about 6 o’clock and it was a
ten-year-old Libyan boy and he would
come with a giant tray of food and just
set it down and leave and so the women
who were still in the village would cook
for us every night and on the upper
right is Anthony Shadid he’s a colleague
and he died in Syria last year of an
asthma attack and that’s it
[Applause]
[Music]
you
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