Photojournalist Yuri Kozyrev has lived through the full arc of the war in Iraq. Based in Baghdad from 2002 to 2009, he documented the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of the country, from the initial “shock and awe” phase of bombardment through the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. He was on the scene in Tikrit when U.S. forces pulled the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein from his underground hideout.

Photojournalist Yuri Kozyrev has lived through the full arc of the war in Iraq – from the initial “shock and awe” phase of bombardment through the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. He worked on the front lines as more and more Iraqis grew to reject the U.S. presence in their country and some came to support an armed insurrection against the American forces. He photographed the war day by day as the insurgency metastasized into a brutal sectarian civil war, sowing the seeds of extremism that continue to devastate the country to this day.