The first email in my inbox Friday morning delivered the tragic news that Associated Press photographer and Pulizer Prize winner, Anja Niedgringhaus, 48, had been shot and killed while working in Afghanistan. Her professional comrade Kathy Gannon, the regional correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan, survived the attack and is being treated in the hospital.
While I’ve never met Anja, I’ve often had the pleasure of incorporating her outstanding work in page designs of AP collateral and internal communications.
Kathy wrote the cover story in a 2012 issue of the staff magazine AP World, where she describes how she and Anja were the first foreign journalists to embed with the Afghan National Army. At times during the two-week embed, they wore burqas, all-covering Muslim dresses, not only to blend in with the culture, but to protect their lives.
So as I put the creative pieces of the magazine feature together from the safe vantage point of my Mac at AP headquarters, I concluded that my end of the journalism experience is much safer in comparison.
Journalists and photographers such as Kathy and Anja, face dangerous conditions on the front lines of conflict zones every day in order to bring unbiased news and information to the world. And Anja’s death represents the reality and unfortunate cost of receiving that information.
