Thomas Dworzak

Thomas Dworzak (born Kötzting, Germany, 1972) is a photojournalist. He has produced a number of books, won a World Press Photo award and is a member of Magnum Photos.

Life and work

Dworzak lived in Tbilisi, Georgia from 1993 until 1998 where he documented the conflicts in Chechnya, Karabakh and Abkhazia. Whilst there he worked on a project about the Caucasus region and its people, the impact years of brutal war had on the region, and the interplay between Russian literature and the typical imagery of the Caucasus. This was published as the book Kavkaz.

A few months after the start of the war in Afghanistan, in 2001, Dworzak travelled to Kandahar with Jon Lee Anderson on an assignment for The New Yorker. Whilst there he found and bought a collection of retouched portrait photographs of Taliban soldiers from photo studios, which he used for the book Taliban. The pictures show a campy esthetics, close to the gay movement in California or a Peter Greenaway film.

For the decade after the September 11 attacks Dworzak covered the ensuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and its impact on US politics. He produced the work for his book M*A*S*H* Iraq, examining the daily lives of medivac teams in Iraq, whilst embedded with them. The book includes screenshots of the TV series M*A*S*H overlaid with subtitles.

Dworzak became a Magnum Photos nominee in 2000 and a member in 2004.

Publications

• Taliban.
  • London: Trolley, 2003. ISBN 978-0954264857.
  • Frankfurt: Hans-Jürgen Maurer, 2003. ISBN 978-3000114021.
• *M*A*S*H Iraq. London: Trolley, 2007. ISBN 978-1904563600.
• Kavkaz. Amsterdam: Schilt, 2011. ISBN 978-9053306994.

Publications with others

• Georgian Spring: A Magnum Journal = ქართულიგაზაფხული მაგნუმი ს დღიურები. London: Chris Boot, New York: Magnum, 2009. ISBN 978-1905712151. Introduction by Wendell Steavenson, photographs by Dworzak, Alec Soth, Antoine D'Agata, Jonas Bendiksen, Martine Franck, Alex Majoli, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, and Mark Power.
• A Year in Photography: Magnum Archive. Munich: Prestel; New York, Paris, London, Tokyo: Magnum, 2010. ISBN 978-3-7913-4435-5.

Awards

• 2000: First Prize, Spot News Story, 2000 World Press Photo Awards, World Press Photo, Amsterdam.
• 2003: Award of Excellence, U.S. News & World Report, sixtieth Pictures of the Year International Competition, Pictures of the Year International, for Chechnya–Girl With Balloons.
• 2004: Award of Excellence, Magazine Division / General News Reporting, sixty first Pictures of the Year International Competition, Pictures of the Year International, for Chained for Time Magazine.