Link: La Lettre de la Photographie

in the early 1990s, Yugoslavia explodes, like a return to the origins, April 1992, Sarajevo is under attack from Karadzic’s murderers, Mladic is under the orders of Milosevic in Belgrade. War had already begun in what is now called “former Yugoslavia”. But the siege of Sarajevo, the suffocation of Bosnia-Herzegovina would give this conflict a new dimension. The tragedy would grow deeper.
The photographers were there without fail, courageous witnesses to the unbearable suffering of the local population. As I have said before, photography is dangerous, and as such, it is essential.

Link: The Leica Camera

On this 20th anniversary of the conflict in Bosnia, Tom Stoddart shares the story of the siege he documented.

The photographs in the gallery above are from the book Bosnia 1992 – 1995, available July 2012. The book will be self-published by the photographers who covered the Bosnian conflict—which began 20 years ago today—and printed in Bosnia. The captions below these photographs are the personal reflections of the photographers on their experiences in the region.

On Wednesday, Shapiro will moderate “Generation Iraq: Journalists Confront America’s War,” a conversation among five reporters at Columbia University. Among them will be the photographers Ashley Gilbertson, who worked in Iraq from 2002 until 2008, and Peter van Agtmael, who has been documenting America’s war and its consequences since 2006. Here’s a selection of van Agtmael and Gilbertson’s photographs from war, and its chilling reverberations back home.

via: OlsonFarlow.com

In Syria, enemies are yards apart. The war is being fought from house to house. Not knowing the local terrain, we were completely dependent on our rebel guides to keep us alive.

the ferocity of the attack scattered the rest of the group, Avaaz said. The three other journalists were forced to turn back and remain trapped in Bab Amr. Ten more activists escorting them were killed in the confused retreat into the neighborhood, which has come under sustained bombardment for the past 25 days

James Nachtwey’s images give us an accurate idea of how he “goes about it”, in the true sense of the word: where others “just want to get out of here”, that’s where he goes. He travels, in principle, in the direction of places that other people are only desperately leaving from, or have already left in a hurry, or can’t leave anymore.

It is with that first movement that he’s already opposing war: With himself. With his safety, his life, his affection, his conviction. All of the above are captured in his images…

Link: LightBox

Meanwhile, in al-Qsair, a town south of Homs, government marksmen continued to take their toll. Says Alessio Romenzi, a photographer on assignment in the area for TIME: “The snipers do not sleep.”

Link: Lens

“Conflict Zone,” an exhibition of conflict photography opening Friday at the New York City Fire Museum, has gone through several versions. The project was originally conceived in fall 2010 as a fundraiser for Joao Silva, who had just been injured in Afghanistan while on assignment for The New York Times.

In my mind’s eye, there is a perpetually revolving carousel of images that define the Iraq war. Many of them I saw in person. But many I did not.

A pool of red, bloody water reflects passers-by with the precision of a mirror. Crushed plastic bottles float on the unruffled surface. That photograph was taken by Ahmad al-Rubaye, a former carpenter and wedding photographer, at the scene of a bombing.

Michael Kamber, Lens

When the war started, photojournalism did show its power to sway public opinion. But it was in those early years as well — in some of the same images — that we saw photojournalism’s failures.

Photo Booth:

The photographer Benjamin Lowy was recently awarded the Duke Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography for his book “Iraq | Perspectives.” The book documents Lowy’s time covering the war in Iraq and reveals the U.S. soldiers’ experiences as seen through their night-vision scopes and their armored Humvee windows. Recently Lowy sat down with me to talk about both his book and his life as a conflict photographer. Here’s a selection of his photographs and what he had to say.

Lens:

“In between conflicts, I go and photograph surfing,” he said. “I’ve always been scared by colleagues who are obsessed with war. I did not want to be like that. So I go make photos of something beautiful.”

It is a kind of therapy, though not without danger.

Though there are no hard numbers, the Libyan war appeared to draw a large number of unprepared and inexperienced photographers to the war zone. Anecdotal evidence suggests hundreds of photographers from around the world flocked to the cities of Ajdabiya, Benghazi and Misurata in the spring of 2011. Many of them were under 30 and under fire for the first time. 
Many paid their own way.

Jehad Nga, LightBox:

The personal conflict I felt during this time brought me to a point where my relation to breaking news played less an immediate role in my work than trying to restore my connection during a period when so much was unclear and surreal. Memories near and far rushed forward and I felt I needed to step back before the whole thing engulfed me.

Greg Marinovich:

Uniquely, the Eritrean revolutionaries fighting for independence from Ethiopia made a decision in the ’Sixties to assign fighters – both male and female – to record the war. They wanted to be in a position to write their own history, and not have their epic struggle distorted by the outside world. They also had to use propaganda to unite the diverse peoples of Eritrea against Ethiopia. The warrior-photographers brief was to be both soldier and reporter, and to decide when to shoot with the camera or with the gun.

The archive chronicles the full tapestry of the Eritrean struggle: the early rebellion; the famine of the ’Eighties that Emperor Haile Selassie exacerbated in an attempt to starve the revolution into submission and the ten long years when the Eritrean guerillas were living in underground bunkers, besieged by the massive Ethiopian army.

He has, as he puts it, taken “terrible liberties” with his life — dashing through rice paddies in Vietnam to escape snipers’ bullets; jumping up to snap a shot during gun battles — to bring home images that are, at times, excruciating to look at but often unforgettable.

Lightbox:

On the tenth anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan, TIME asks 40 renowned photographers to reflect on their harrowing experiences covering the conflict—and to describe which of their own photographs moved them most.

Photo by James Nachtwey