When a photojournalist makes the choice to document conflict and the aftermath of conflict,

they accept a high level of unpredictability.

Recognizing the fact is necessary, not only for telling the story, but also

keeping yourself and the people around you safe, at least as safe as you can be. You have to be

open to all the possibilities. That's the lesson that photographer Sebastian Mayer learned

several times over while working and living in Iraqi Kurdistan.

For over a decade, he documented the complex political and cultural history of the Kurds,

eventually beginning the first Iraqi-based photo agency with his best friend, Kamran Najin.

From the very beginning, he had to reconsider what he thought he knew about the people

and their history if he was to tell an honest and nuanced story.

In a way, I'd never worked before because as a photographer, you're very used as photojournalist.

You're very used to covering events as they happen. And this was, I was photographing

an event that had happened over 20 years ago, or exactly 20 years ago. So I was photo, I referred to it at the time,

like photographing ghosts. I was photographing everything that wasn't there. The people who, who had

died were, were gone. So I was photographing the survivors and in a way that

would translate that story. It was a challenge and like a really good challenge. The photo agency,

which began with just him and Kamran eventually grew, providing people from the region an opportunity

to tell their own stories and share them

with the world. Their success included publication in international magazines and awards.

But things changed dramatically when Comran was wounded while covering a brutal skirmish

with the terrorist organization ISIS that had come to take control of the region.

We'd had an official statement at that point from the Kurdish Peshmerga ministry that Karman was officially dead.

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