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" It seems like, yeah, of course - I always think my work is important, or I wouldn't risk my life for it. "

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" I never went to school for photography and started when I was pretty young. I was somewhere around 12 or 13. I started photographing as a hobby and carried that hobby through high school and university. "

" Sometimes when I am photographing a major news event, I am suddenly overwhelmed by helplessness. "

" The Taliban rose to power in 1996, vowing stability and an end to the violence raging across the country between warring mujahedeen factions, and to implement rule by Sharia law, or strict Islamic rule. "

" I was lucky because I had parents who have enabled me to do whatever I was passionate about and never held my siblings and me back from anything. But I think a lot of people don't have that experience. "

" I think it's important to have perspective and to look at what you don't necessarily want to see. "

" The possibility to mobilize the international community to act on human suffering is what drives me every day as a photojournalist. "

" I started freelancing for the Associated Press. I had a great mentor there who sort of taught me everything. "

" You have two options when you approach a hostile checkpoint in a war zone, and each is a gamble. The first is to stop and identify yourself as a journalist and hope that you are respected as a neutral observer. The second is to blow past the checkpoint and hope the soldiers guarding it don't open fire on you. "

" I wanted to continue doing my work, but I had to figure out how. And so what I have basically come up with is that I still go to Afghanistan and Iraq and South Sudan and many of these places that are rife with war, but I don't go directly to the front line. "

" When I'm documenting, for example, a story on women in Afghanistan, I will do a huge amount of research and a lot of time on the ground just getting to know the women before I even start shooting. "

" I grew up in Connecticut, going in and out of New York City, and I worked in the city in the '90s. I was freelancing for the Associated Press, and I fell in love with New York. "

" It's very hard to turn your back once you're aware of what's going on, and you're aware of the injustices, and you're aware of the civilian casualties. It's much easier if you have no idea and you've never seen it. "

" I think there were times when I first started out, when I was covering Iraq - I was basically living there in 2003 and 2004 - that car bombs and attacks became so the norm that it was weird for me to leave and realize that no one else actually cared about what was going on there. "

" The fact is that trauma and risk taking hadn't become scarier over the years; it had become more normal. "

" I remember the moment in which we were taken hostage in Libya, and we were asked to lie face down on the ground, and they started putting our arms behind our backs and started tying us up. And we were each begging for our lives because they were deciding whether to execute us, and they had guns to our heads. "

" I've seen so many photographers rush to do books the minute they start shooting, but one great thing about photography is that the images don't go away, so the more I sit with these images, the more I learn which ones have had the most impact. "

" I'm constantly struggling. You know, the stories that I feel like I could cover, do the work that I want to do and being a mother. That's really where my struggle is - and being a wife and having a life - and for me it's really hard to find that balance. I'm always struggling to find that balance. "

" I didn't know a single female photographer who covered conflict who even had a boyfriend, much less a husband or a baby. "

" For me personally, I'm constantly trying to really re-negotiate how I'm going to make a living because I can't make a living solely off editorial. And I'm also still trying to tell long feature stories that are harder and harder to get assigned, you know. "

" You have to believe 100 percent in what you're doing, that some picture or some thing we do is going to change the world in some tiny, minute way. "

Change The World

" In so many countries, Western journalists are viewed simply as dollar signs. We're ransom objects. "

" Family is such a fundamental part of Islam, and women run the family. I had to force myself not to impose my own definition of political and social freedom on women in Islam, and approach each story objectively. "

" Every story takes its toll on me and leaves an impression on me. "

" As a woman, I have tried to take advantage of the extra access I have in the Muslim world: with Muslim women, for example. Many people underestimate women in that part of the world because, typically, they don't work. "

" I wanted the ideal personal life, but I also wanted to keep rushing off, and that doesn't work, not unless you've got an incredibly understanding partner. "

" I was undeterred by the danger of traveling as a single American woman through Taliban-governed land. I believed in the stories I wanted to tell, the stories I felt were underreported, and I was convinced that that belief would keep me alive. "

" I interviewed dozens and dozens of African women who had endured more hardship and trauma than most Westerners even read about, and they ploughed on. I often openly cried during interviews, unable to process this violence and hatred towards women I was witnessing. "

" It was nice to be in my own country, where I didn't need a translator or a driver. Where I didn't need to figure out cultural references or what hijab I needed to wear to cover my hair. "

" Most people, when they meet me, one of the first things they say is, 'Why would you voluntarily subject yourself to war? Why would you go into these places where you know there's a risk of getting killed?' "

" With each assignment, I weigh the looming possibility of being killed, and I chastise myself for allowing fear to hinder me. War photographers aren't supposed to get scared. "