Working across Asia and beyond, Altaf Qadri is a highly respected and an award-winning photojournalist who for the last 15 years has been at the cutting edge of international photojournalism. Altaf started out covering news and features stories for the European Press Photo Agency (EPA) in Kashmir before moving on to the Associated Press and over the course of his career he has covered everything from political turmoil and cultural interest stories through to major natural disasters. His photographs appear daily in a wide range of highly esteemed international publications.
Altaf is also a well experienced conflict photographer who has documented everything from deadly street battles in his native Kashmir to full blown international and civil wars such as those in Afghanistan and Libya, where in 2012 he spent around two days hiding behind the lines of General Gadaffi's advancing forces.
Having repeatedly risked life and limb to file hard-hitting reports
from some of the world's most fraught regions, Altaf is a fount of practical journalistic knowledge and photographic know-how that has time and again been put to the test out in the field.
Altaf, a 2007 National Geographic All Roads Fellow, has won numerous awards and accolades include winning the World Press Photo twice, multiple Photographer of the Year International awards among many others. To impart photojournalism education to people interested in different genres of photography, Altaf has founded Visual Photo Academy (VPA) through which he takes students to photography expeditions and photo workshops. Altaf has delivered lectures at The Aurora Forum at the Stanford University, Los Angeles college of Arts, National Geographic Headquarters in Washington DC. He delivers guest lectures to the students at various universities and colleges across India and conducts regular photo workshops in India and abroad. Altaf is a 2023 World Press Photo jury member. The New York Times has described him as "prolific and perceptive". He is presently based out of New Delhi.
Altaf has often chosen to speak publicly about an incident that nudged him into thinking about the place of photography in his life. In 1996, as a 20-year-old, he was returning home after prayers at the neighbourhood mosque in Rainawari, Srinagar. There had been a grenade attack at Shiraz, a nearby cinema hall that had been converted into a camp of the Border Security Force (BSF). Shiraz also doubled up as a notorious ‘interrogation’ centre for suspected militants and anybody else who ran afoul of the counterinsurgency apparatus. Just as Altaf was about to step into the narrow lane that led to his home, he was stopped by a group of BSF soldiers. The men dragged him off to the mouth of the street, where they then made him stand as a human shield, a cover for their own..... Read more...
The Libyan revolution was an armed conflict in Libya fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and those seeking to oust his government. The war was preceded by protests in Benghazi beginning on 15 February 2011, which led to clashes with Gaddafi forces that fired on the crowd. The protests escalated into a rebellion that spread across the country.
I crossed into Libya to cover the revolution for the Associated Press on 29th March 2011 through the Egyptian land port of Salloum, the main border point between Egypt and Libya. Spent the first night in Tubruk, a small coastal town in eastern Libya, before heading toward Benghazi. This was one of the best route for foreign.... Read more....