Portfolio: Local Photographers Step Up In Iraq

When Iraqis go to the polls to vote January 30, a large percentage of the photographers covering the historic event will be homegrown photojournalists, some of which didn't even have access to e-mail two years ago.

With threats from insurgents often relegating Western journalists to bystander status, Iraqi photographers have seized the opportunity. AP, AFP and Reuters have come to rely heavily on local stringers for their Iraqi coverage; in Reuters' case, as much as 90 to 95 percent of its photos are generated by Iraqi photojournalists, who have better access and can blend in with the population.

PDN recently spoke to Chris Helgren, the man responsible for recruiting and training Reuters' Iraqi stringer network. As the wire service's chief photographer for Iraq since shortly after the war began in 2003, Helgren has assembled a team of 12 contract freelancers, about half of which are based in the Baghdad area. When news breaks, these are often the first to arrive on the scene.

"It took six months for us to see the seeds really begin to sprout," Helgren says. "But the local guys started getting better and better."

After hiring an English professor to serve as a language coach, Helgren recruited several Iraqi photojournalists, many who had no previous journalistic training. For example, Atef Hassan, who captured dramatic pictures of British army troops under fire in Basra, originally trained as a hairdresser.

"One day he got his eye and it was like learning a language," Helgren says of his protégée.

Not all of Reuters' Iraqi photographers are novices, however. Faleh Kheiber, a 14-year veteran with Reuters, has been an integral part of the coverage. Akram Saleh spent a year at an Iraqi news agency before joining Reuters two years ago. Ceerwan Aziz learned photography from his father, who once served as president of an Iraqi photographers association, and later worked for an Iraqi sports newspaper.

While Iraqi photographers can navigate the streets and speak the language better than outside journalists, Iraq has no tradition of a free press. Still, teaching Iraqi photographers journalistic ethics wasn't hard, Helgren says.

"You teach by leading them," he says. "I showed them how you can get a much better picture candidly--even with a long lens--than by setting something up, which across the Arab world is quite natural to do."

Helgren calls Iraq "photography training on steroids."

"You either sink or swim [in Iraq], and all of them performed wonderfully," says Thomas Szlukovenyi, Reuters global pictures news editor.

In the past, the wire services were more apt to parachute their hotshot photographers into a situation. But Szlukovenyi says that changed with the fall of the Iron curtain, when Reuters and the other wire services began to rely more on local talent.

"The fall of the Iron Curtain was the real breaking point for us, where we realized there was a huge amount of local talent out there we weren't utilizing. Now [recruiting local stringers] has become our model," he says.

One of the incentives for the Iraqi photographers is that they're recording their country's history. "We pay well, and it supports their families, but the biggest incentive is the work they do and seeing it on the front pages of their own newspapers as well as [Western] newspapers," Helgren says.

But being a photojournalist in Iraqi is perilous work regardless of one's nationality. During the first year of the war, the main threat to journalists came from coalition troops. Reuters itself had several photographers and cameramen killed from so-called "friendly fire." Photographers from Reuters and competing agencies also suffered arrests, detentions and, during one month in 2003, photographers had as many as 40 memory cards seized from their cameras at gunpoint.

When the 82nd Airborne left the area surrounding Falluja and Ramadi and the marines took over last fall, relations with the military improved. Lately, the biggest threat to journalists has come from car bombs and kidnappings.

The dangers have limited what even the Iraqi photographers can cover, and Helgren says he's not shy about yanking someone off a story if the situation becomes too hot. Helgren concedes that news agencies may not be covering both sides of the war equally, but he's refused numerous offers to embed his photographers with the insurgency.

"We take the position that there's no way they can guarantee our safety and we don't want to go there," he says. "[The insurgents] are getting nailed pretty badly. I really have to be strict about the safety issue."

The elections will mark Helgren's last trip to Baghdad for a while. The photographer is giving way to Robert Strong, who takes over the helm of chief photographer for the region. Haider Hamza, a 19-year-old former TV producer Helgren trained as a photo editor, will continue to play an pivotal role in the company's Iraq coverage.

Helgren will take up a new post with Reuters in February. His job in Iraq, he says, is done.

--Click on the photo above to view a slideshow of images by Helgren and his Iraqi team.

Editor's Note: Helgren, 39, started his photography career in Canada and after four years moved to London to work with Reuters, where he helped launch coverage of the first Gulf War. His next move was to the Balkans to cover the war in Bosnia. In 1996 he became a picture sub-editor while still shooting photo assignments around Europe and the Middle East. In 2002, Helgren again went to the Gulf to organize the Reuters photographic coverage of the war in Iraq. Starting from Kuwait, he was the first photographer into the southern city of Basra, then moved on to Baghdad, and later moved on to the northern stronghold of Tikrit the day it fell to the U.S. Marines. In 2003 he became Chief Photographer in Iraq and the Gulf.