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Subscribe to RSSSebastian Rich has covered every major war and conflict of the past 30 years. He has been wounded several times, kidnapped and held hostage while on assignment as a photographer and television cameraman.
Children in Conflict, an exhibition at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., is showcasing a selection of images from Rich's career alongside a new body of work produced for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The new collection illustrates the plight of Afghan refugees in the Jalozai refugee camp in Pakistan.
Sebastian Rich
Young Afghan refugee in the Jalozai UNHCR refugee camp, Pakistan, 2012. Jalozai is one of the largest of 150 refugee and transit camps in Pakistan, holding Afghan refugees from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the present day.
By Sebastian Rich
The reason I became a photojournalist is summed up eloquently by this saying:
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.
Being a chronic dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy, I guess taking photographs was a natural progression, given the old adage, "A picture speaks a thousand words."
I left school, or should I say, ran away from school, at the tender age of 15 and have been looking through cameras of one sort or another at the world's wars ever since.
Sebastian Rich
Pakistan, 2012. An outside classroom for Afghan women and young girls in the UNHCR Jalozai refugee camp.
One of the women had brought her small son with her, and he cheekily leaned back from the group to look at me.
Sebastian Rich
Bosnia, 1993. A local priest talks to the crew of a British United Nations tank. He is trying to negotiate some sort of cease-fire between a local Bosnian militia and a group of heavily armed Croatian fighters. The cease-fire lasted all of ten minutes then the priest and myself ran for cover!
These past decades have not been without personal loss and pain. I have lost so many friends in the theater of war that I am ashamed to admit I have lost count.
I have lost most of the hearing in my right ear and 30 percent of the vision in my right eye -- courtesy of a Serbian sniper with a high velocity rifle. Obviously, not a very good sniper, otherwise I would not be telling the tale, but good enough to cripple.
Sebastian Rich
The first prisoners of war taken by the United States Marine Corps during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
A large chunk of my lower intestine is missing due to the shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade. I was lucky that the hot shrapnel was slowed down by two Lebanese soldiers standing in front of me. They were not so fortunate.
My sternum is cracked and deformed, once again from a Serbian sniper, this time hitting me directly in the center of the chest smashing the ceramic plate in my flak jacket and crushing my rib cage. Last, but not least, I have experienced being kidnapped in Lebanon and a mock execution in an unpronounceable town in the former Yugoslavia with far too many consonants in its name--particularly difficult for a dyslexic.
Sebastian Rich
Fighters of a warlord in Mogadishu, Somalia. They tolerated me as they fought but as you can see there were those whose burning eyes did not fall too kindly on this photographer.
I am often asked how I keep my objectivity while constantly photographing and filming the worst the world has to offer. Well, I believe we all have an agenda to some degree or another, however subtle. My agenda, if you like, is not left or right of the political spectrum, but in the center of the insanity that I witness. Hoping somewhat (very) naively, that a single image one day might change the course of that conflict, ergo an agenda.
Sebastian Rich
A terribly malnourished Afghan baby boy in a UNICEF Therapeutic feeding center in Herat, Afghanistan. His fate is unknown to me.
Objectivity was ironically summed up for me by my mentor and friend, the extraordinarily talented American combat photographer John Hoagland.
John and I had been trying not to get shot by Salvadoran troops in that bloody civil war by hiding behind a cow. To the left of me was the dead body of a pregnant woman, who had been shot through the stomach revealing part of the fetus. In a moment of calm from the hail of bullets, I lay on my back shaking and asked John, "How do you stay objective in all this horror?" He answered, "It's easy Sebastian. You do something good, I will take your photograph. You do something bad, I will take your photograph."
John was shot and killed just a few weeks later photographing Salvadoran troops doing something very bad. He was 36 years old.
Sebastian Rich
U.S. Army Medics fighting hard to save the life of a young baby girl on board a Blackhawk medevac helicopter in Afghanistan, 2011. She had been hit by shrapnel from a Taliban RPG. Inside an airborne Blackhawk helicopter you can hardly hear yourself think. But I could hear the little girl's screams of terrible pain clearly above the roar of the rotors.
Sebastian Rich's exhibition, which is supported by UNHCR and The Diplomatic Courier, runs at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. from October 2 to October 12, 2012.
Rich will be giving a talk at the Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts and Design in Philadelphia on Thursday, October 4th.
Click here to see more of Sebastian Rich's work and here to view a trailer for Crossing the Line, a documentary about his experiences in Bosnia.
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Mr. Rich is a part of a very braave fratrernity, the combat photagraphers. Without his pictures politicians would have a real heyday. Thank you for your service Mr. Rich. Your pictures should remind us all that we are our brothers keeper.
Sorry to say as an American citizen, but I think a day of terrible reckoning is due, for those invading, western colonial powers, that pillaged some of these lands!?
In that regard, it causes me to ponder the possibility, that from 9/11 to the present, do all of these attacks & uprisings by the terrorist groups, have something to do with the past grievances?!!
Of course they do! We have been invading countries for no other reason than financial interests all over the world, especially in Central america and the Caribbean. We have installed dictators and toppled duly elected presidents and officials just because they didn't agree with us.
Now the cows have come home to roost. And, surprise!! we don't like it.
these pictures are beyond words.....very powerful and SCARY!! war sucks....
Mutual slaughter is all that war is. Nothing is solved. Nothing is changed. Obviously the World is a much less Safe place to live.
What I hate the most is that the injustice of my Tax dollar use automatically makes me Guilty. You have no idea how much this Obstructs my Right to the pursuit of any Happiness what-so-ever. We need a defense only military in our own country, like we need Corporations working and hiring in our own country only.
These images burn straight in to my soul. Hopefully they remind us all how dangerous and horrible war is, and how we should never enter into war by choice as we did in Iraq. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who never actually served in wartime (in fact, as is publically know, both Bush and Cheney did everything in their power to avoid serving) but managed to enter us into a war should take some time to examine these images, they are in no small part responsible.
Those pictures show the real middle east...Finally someone posted real pictures
That's why they call it war, though I found most of the photos rather mild. A classroom on the open ground doesn't qualify as "searing images". Where's the blood and guts?
The fourth photo is absolutely incredible. I might make it my screen saver. I love it.
The photographer knew that photo would tickle your heart strings, Mr. Cheney.
Well now! I haven't seen independent reporting about a war since Vietnam. I didn't even know it was still legal.... and to see it in the corporate press is downright uh... unexpected.
This guy doesn't sound like he was embedded in US military forces. Could this mean they're actually thinking of ending the war in a couple of years?
Surely they aren't going to start allowing independent reporting again... Like they say...it could be bad for the reporter's health.
Of course, war photographers have always been be censored and always will be. Why not show the deceased pregnant woman shot through the stomach that showed the fetus? The powers that be would never allow the true horrors of war to be shown publicly because it would probably put a quick end to their idiocy.
"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
-Part of Carl Sagan's speech- The Pale Blue Dot. Read It.
when any politician gets the idea to want the US to get involved in another country's affairs, the politicians themselves should be at the front lines leading the way to tell the people of that country what they want,
it shouldn't be the population of any country that goes to fight the wars started by its leaders,
it's the same as with the Taliban and all the clowns who claim to be fighting a religious war, but in fact they're only fighting someone for Else's ideas and ideology,
those leaders who claim someone needs to die for a cause,
their followers need to ask that clown why isn't he volunteering to be the first who's willing to die for his cause,
then i bet there won't be as many @$$ holes spouting off about what is worth dieing for if they're not willing to be the first to die.
but the world seems to be full of people with the idea that everyone should do as they want no matter who suffers as long as it's not them.
No one ever really wins a war but it is a neccessary evil that sometimes must happen in order for you to sit at home and not live in fear everyday. So go ahead and judge that soldier for keeping you safe. Go ahead and criticize this photographer for doing his job and showing you images you would otherwise never see but before you judge anyone of these people make sure that you're the perfect person first. I for one pity you for judging other people for things you know nothing about until you've experienced it first hand.
I don't have to be a perfect person to judge soldiers! I stared down the barrel of an American Soldier's gun as a 6 year old!!! Where? In El Salvador, a country where most of the American Soldiers probably had never ever heard of being shipped there. Can most Americans point out countries without the aid of a political map? No, why? I used to think it was because Americans were lazy, I'm now thinking that maybe, it's our Politician's best interest to keep the broken down Educational system in order to keep the population stupid enough to be able to spoon-feed them propaganda without them looking into it for themselves. What was that Colin Powell said, Trust me, Trust me - when speaking about the weapons of mass destruction. Current day soldiers aren't keeping anyone safe, they're just pawns in someone's political chess game. Iraq? America hired, groomed, and trained Saddam, but then he got out of control...same things with a lot of the so called Tyrants. We trained them and them disposed of them, but they were all our creations. Are you a graduate of the School of the America's???
:-( War does no good and it only hurts...if men want to wage war then first remove all people that want no part in it then place everyone that does in a field and let it rip.
Very moving photographs - certainly showing both sides of war and its conflicts. You can certainly "feel" the terror, force and pain of war - especially feeling when you see children and know they suffer, our soldiers and their brave fight and their heroic acts to save lives, also those behind the scenes such as the priest trying to stop fighting. There is much to lose in fighting and war - hopefully, we can bring our troops home but we will still have to live and communicate in this dangerous world.
Objectivity is letting go of any alignment with the good or bad, right or wrong. This work, and the photographs that are shared, simply astonish me with the depth of realism, pain, and preciousness of life they convey.
Totally breath taking!
I hope these images give people who have no concept of war an idea why those of us who have endured it keep our experiences close to the vest. It defies description, and it burrows itself deeply into our beings for life. It is why warfighters, those who actually fought in combat, tend to keep to ourselves, or one another. It is a very strange brotherhood, again, indescribable. All we ask is to be cared for our wounds, given a small amount of respect, and a bit of understanding. And to be re-admitted into the society we left to go fight in some foreign place.
Right or wrong, we simply did our duty. Blame the politicians for the reasons, except for cases when we find ourselves avenging a massacre of our own people. That comes from the heart, and there is no more fearful warrior than an American Fighting Man (Woman) defending his/her country.
makes me think of 9/11, how many storeys are told there? Then think about these pics when your filling up your gas tank, thats what this war is about oil. face the facts you two face peices of @!$%#.
As the song goes......WAR, what is it good for?
All suffer, but to see the innocent children that have no voice....this is the tragedy, and the saddest of it all.....
War, what is it good for. Nothin.....ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN.