Time
Kamaran Najm Ibrahim, a 27-year-old photographer, was killed near Kirkuk on Thursday, Olivier Laurent reports for Time. Ibrahim was covering fighting between jihadists and security forces.
In 2012, Ibrahim was a co-founder of MetroGraphy, an agency of Iraq-based photographers and photojournalists.
“As an Iraqi photographer based in Kurdistan, I cannot deny that we have [to shoot images of war]. We have to cover breaking news,” Ibrahim explained at a TEDxErbil event in January 2014. “But, as a photographer I know that there are some kinds of other photos that we need to capture, there are some kinds of moments that we need to capture for the history of this country. I wondered where was the beauty?”
In April, Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 164 journalists have been killed in Iraq since 1992.
Iraqi Kurdistan may seem calm compared with much of the Middle East, but the media are vulnerable whenever internal political tensions flare. Amid impunity for anti-press attacks, including murder and arson, journalists say they must self-censor on topics like religion, social inequality, and corruption associated with powerful officials.
In April, Associated Press photographer Anja Niedringhaus was killed in Afghanistan.
Correction: This story originally reported that Ibrahim worked for Time. That is incorrect. According to Time, “Ibrahim’s work has been published in The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The Times and Financial Times.”
