Photojournalist Reza Reflects on Conflict and the Human Soul

Award-winning photojournalist and humanitarian Reza has devoted his career to covering wars, revolutions, uprisings, and natural disasters.

“The most brutality and cruelty you can ever see is in war,” Reza told me recently, while he was here at National Geographic headquarters in Washington to finalize the launch of his new book “Reza War + Peace.”

“I have also seen the sometimes incredible human relationships and friendship,” he added. “People … wanting to sacrifice themselves for their friends, for their families, showing the incredible soul that is inside the human even in the worst time of war.” (Watch Reza discuss this in the video below.)

In “Reza War + Peace” (National Geographic Focal Point; November 18, 2008; $75), a 30-year retrospective of his work, Reza chronicles his career in places of conflict through images that pair turmoil with hope, joy with despair.

As a photojournalist for National Geographic, Newsweek, Time, and other publications, Reza’s journey has taken him from his native Iran, where he was jailed and tortured because of his photography, to dozens of countries gripped by turmoil: Kurdistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, China, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Africa, and more.

While he focuses on the costs of war and the universal human condition, his message is ultimately hopeful.

“My camera is always looking for the truth that often hides in the shadows,” Reza writes. “Being patient, staying right in the thick of wars, celebrations, tears, screams, the core events of life, and becoming nothing but a visual resonance chamber — that is my role.”

Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1995: Mothers look through a photo exhibit of children who had become lost during the ethnic conflicts.

By acting as a witness, Reza is contributing “to building a world where

the word ‘war’ will belong in the past. I believe that, one day,

humanity will remember these conflicts as a form of behavior practiced

by its primitive ancestors. Then, peace will have triumphed.”

Here is a selection of photos from “Reza War + Peace.” Scroll to the

bottom of the page for additional information about the photographer.

Describing himself as “a pilgrim seeking a world in which the best of

humanity blossoms and flourishes,” Reza is committed also to taking

action.

In 2001 he founded Aïna, the Afghan Media and Cultural Center,

an international nonprofit organization devoted to developing a free

press in Afghanistan. It helps ensure that journalists, intellectuals

and artists can speak freely, provides training in media and

communications for women and offers educational programs for children.