In a Turkish terrorist court in Diyarbakir, this Kurdish woman was sentenced to 13 years in prison, accused of belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which seeks to create an independent state in southeastern Turkey, 2006
Even people who don’t know Ed Kashi’s name are often familiar with his photographs. Over the course of his nearly 50-year career, the award-winning photojournalist has created memorable long-form photo-essays for National Geographic, and his work has been published in Time, Newsweek and The New York Times. The
has called him “one of the leading and most innovative photojournalists of our time.”
is also the title of his most recent book. The exhibition runs through Nov. 16.
Ed Kashi
A worker subcontracted by Shell Oil Company cleans up an oil spill from a well owned by Shell that had been left abandoned for over 25 years, 2004
“One of the many reasons that I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to have a long career in this field is that I get to really go deep with issues and subjects that I come to truly care about and that I think that are important,” Kashi said.
One thing that sets Kashi apart from more events-driven news photographers is the length of time he spends with his subjects. He often embeds himself with the groups he’s documenting for months on end, returning year after year for decades-long projects.
“I often say I’m as much of an anthropologist as I am a journalist,” Kashi said. “While many of my projects have a journalistic edge, or they’re topical — like oil in Nigeria or Jewish settlers in the West Bank — I’m not a great news photographer, and frankly, I don’t like working in situations where there’s a lot of other media around. It always feels intrusive to me, and it makes me uncomfortable.
“I much prefer to work where my subjects, or collaborators, as I like to call them, are my own, and I’m able to develop a direct relationship,” he said.
One of Kashi’s longest-running photojournalism projects centered on the Kurdish diaspora. He began photographing the Kurds for National Geographic in 1991 — his first major project for the magazine — and kept returning to the subject for the next three decades.
“It was something I really cared about, and I was given this tremendous support that only National Geographic could give, where I went to eight countries — not only in the Middle East, but in the Kurdish diaspora in Germany and the U.K. — and I was really able to spend time to tell a very deep story about what was the largest ethnic group in the world without a nation of their own,” Kashi said. “The Kurds have the geopolitical misfortune of being in what is now Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, mainly, so not the friendliest places for a minority group.”
One of Kashi’s most compelling images from that series was taken at a military tribunal in Diyarbakir, Turkey. A fashionably dressed Kurdish woman, accused of being a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), stands at a cage-like witness stand, a handful of armed military men behind her.
“I think I got in because I was following a Kurdish human rights lawyer, so I sort of traipsed into the courtroom with him and made a few pictures. And that ended up being a very significant image,” Kashi said. “But after that image appeared in the magazine, they (the Turkish government) confiscated all the copies of (that) 1992 issue of National Geographic within Turkey.”
Despite the attempted censorship, that image, and others from the series, reached a wide international audience. Kashi credits those images with bringing much greater attention to the persecution of the Kurds, a subject that had previously gone underreported.
The Turkish government, meanwhile, grew increasingly restrictive on press freedom. Government repression is an ever-present challenge for photojournalists around the world, Kashi said, and something he has contended with many times.
“For journalists, and particularly for photographers, there is a constant battle of how much can we get away with. How close can we get? What can we access? And when that gets shut down, we have to find other ways to gain access,” he said.
The global landscape for press freedom has gotten significantly worse in recent years, according to Kashi, with widespread and concerted attacks on journalists that he calls “unprecedented.”
“Look at our own Pentagon and the restrictions they’re trying to place on the media,” Kashi said. “It’s a very interesting and tricky moment right now for the media in general, all around the world. There’s been an increase in journalists being arrested, imprisoned and in some cases killed, particularly in Gaza.”
Although Kashi said he has sometimes risked his life for stories, he was never deliberately targeted, the way he said some journalists are currently being targeted and killed in places such as Gaza and Ukraine.
“I’ve not worked in Ukraine, but a colleague of mine, who works a lot with the New York Times as a photographer, was just saying, the scariest thing is when you’re driving down a highway and you hear a drone overhead. It’s not even about (accidentally being hit by) missiles or bombardment from planes or artillery. It’s that a drone can take your car out because they suspect you of being the enemy, or they just want to,” Kashi said. “They know you’re a journalist. They wanted to target you.”
Despite the dangers, photojournalists continue doing their jobs, Kashi said, because they know it can change people’s hearts and minds. Kashi has seen the far-reaching impact his own work has had, and he hopes it will inspire others.
“If you tell good stories, and you tell them in an authentic and sincere way, you can reach people. You can penetrate their consciousness,” Kashi said. “And whether they donate money, or they get involved through their actions, or, at the very least, you might change their mind about something. That’s the reason we must do this work.”
Ed Kashi
A journey, made in 1999, to some of Peru's most outstanding natural and man-made sights. A cloudy view near Machu Picchu.
