Goran Tomasevic Conflict

Introduction of the photographer

Goran Tomasevic was born in Belgrade in 1969 and has worked as a photojournalist in conflict zones since war engulfed his native Yugoslavia two decades ago, producing some of the most memorable images of our times.

Tomasevic covered the Balkans for a local paper and, from 1996, for Reuters. He was one of only a few journalists to remain in Pristina during the 1999 NATO bombing, a very personal introduction to a career spent on the world’s frontlines.

He was based in Jerusalem from 2002 during the Palestinian Intifada. In 2003 he was working out of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, when an American tank controversially fired a shell on the hotel, killing his friend and colleague Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and José Couso of Telecinco Spanish television. His photograph of a U.S. marine watching Saddam Hussein’s statue toppled in Baghdad, taken the following day, is an enduring image of the war.

Another iconic picture that ran on hundreds of newspaper front pages around the world in March 2011, was of an airstrike on forces loyal to Gaddafi by coalition forces near Benghazi in Libya. Tomasevic had been based in Cairo since 2006 and captured the drama of the Arab Spring and Libyan revolt of 2011. He is currently Reuters chief photographer for east Africa based in Nairobi where in 2013 he covered with extreme proximity the Westgate shopping mall attack. His coverage of the ongoing Syrian civil war was awarded 1^st place in the Spot News Stories category at the recent World Press Photo awards.

Whether from Iraq or Afghanistan, or Syria in the past year, Tomasevic brings his audience right into the action, portraying life, and instants of death, up close. He says, “I’m trying to stay as long as I can in the field. I want to show the reality and I want to show exactly how it was with my pictures so I’m not pulling that easily out of a combat area. If there is enough light to shoot pictures I will stay until the end.”