conflict

Camille Lepage, 25, is an independent French photographer living in South Sudan. She works on long term projects about topics that do not make to the mainstream media and looks at the consequences of the politics on the populations.

For over a year now, documentary photographer Camille Lepage has been photographing the struggles of South Sudan. As a new country, sovereign since 2011, South Sudan can be considered a hotbed for social, political, and religious conflicts. These conflicts are laid bare by Lepage through a strong, intuitive eye and a determination to get her shot.

Her two on-going bodies of work, You Will Forget Me and Vanishing Youth (which are on display below) contain stirring imagery that speak of the violence, and the religious and cultural dissonance that permeates this young country and its people.

It’s cold. The air is stinging my ears and my hands are numb. I pull back on my gloves and resume huddling in the conner of the courtyard. It’s December in Aleppo and the air is bitter, but the overwhelming sense of dread comes not from the cold, but from overhead. Early morning, midday, through the night; the aerial bombardment doesn’t stop. The sound of a jet buzzing overhead and those terrible trails of white streaming from the underbelly as missiles launch. Distant blasts and then closer ones. Mortar strikes as well. Silence and then an explosion.

Conflict photographers like Michael Kamber and Louie Palu have spent years covering the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've lost friends, been very nearly killed themselves, and come back with incredible (and sometimes hard to stomach) photos.

Both of their work is currently on display alongside many of their peers' at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and in the short video above, they share the stories behind some of their most moving imagery. (Note: the above video contains some strong imagery)

"I wonder which one of us dies first?"

It was 2003, and a stray, morbid thought crossed my mind one night in a hotel in Iraq. I was in a room full of twenty and thirty-something photographers and journalists, in the Al-Hamra hotel in Baghdad. A few miles away, the grown-ups from major label news organizations had filled the Sheraton-Palestine hotel---the Al-Hamra was the low-rent downtown spill-over tent.

While on assignment in the Middle East, war photographer Tracey Shelton had her gear stolen during an attempted kidnapping back in August 2011. As a freelance photojournalist, she didn't have a newspaper's funding to lean back on, and found herself out of several thousand dollars worth of camera gear.

Her work in the Middle East has been nothing short of an inspiration to photojournalists everywhere, but since the theft she's had to borrow gear and use sub par equipment to do her job. And so two recent journalism school graduates have decided to turn to crowdfunding to try and get her properly equipped to do what she does best.

NPR has published a fascinating piece about 25-year-old young Syrian woman named Noor Kelze who has been working the front lines of the Syrian conflict as a conflict photographer for Reuters.

Behold, the coolest photography-related toy we've seen so far this year: War Journalist: Battlefield Hero. It's a 1/6-scale Toymaster-brand action figure that lets kids play make believe with their very own conflict photographer!

"Deadly sniper shot through the lens." That's the title of a photoblog entry published over on Reuters last week by staff photographer Goran Tomasevic, who's covering the deadly conflict in Syria. The photo above was accompanied by the text, "A tank fired a couple of shells onto the top of the building and rubble fell down around us."

When you mention the words "vacation photos," most people might think of trips to the mountains or to the beach. Not Toshifumi Fujimoto. The 45-year-old Japanese trucker is passionate about "war tourism" -- he actually takes on the role of a conflict photographer when on vacation. In recent days, he has been shooting on the front lines of the Syrian civil war, putting his life on the line for images that he keeps as a personal collection rather than sells for reportage purposes.

Here's a powerful video shared by The Economist a couple of years ago that features acclaimed British photojournalist Don McCullin talking about his 50 years of photographing war, atrocities, and human suffering. (Warning: it contains disturbing images.)

Freelance photojournalist Tracey Shelton captured the striking image above showing the instant a tank shell exploded in a Syrian rebel outpost earlier this week.

This may be a rare case in which a $695 class might actually save your life: Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is offering a safety course for journalists who cover war, conflict and disaster zones.

Here’s a fascinating video in which Italian photographer Ruben Salvadori demonstrates how dishonest …

Photojournalist João Silva lost his legs to a land mine in Afghanistan at the end of last year, but -- after months of intense rehabilitation -- returned to work in July, landing a photo on the front page of the New York Times. On August 2nd, Silva visited the Bronx Documentary Center and gave a talk on his thoughts and experiences.

The New York Times has a powerful piece about photographer …

The Guardian compiled a powerful collection of vignettes by war photographers recounting times …

New York Times photographer Lynsey Addario was recently released along with three male …