Thomas Dworzak
Thomas Dworzak became a Magnum nominee in 2000 and a full member in 2004.
In the years following the 9/11 attacks, he spent time covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as their impact on the U.S. During a several-months assignment in Afghanistan for The New Yorker, he discovered studio portraits of the Taliban; these images would form his first book, Taliban.
The images that were taken during his many assignments in Iraq, most of which were shot for TIME, were used to create his next book: M*A*S*H* IRAQ.
From 2005 to 2008, as a TIME magazine contract photographer, Dworzak covered many major international news stories including: Macedonia, Pakistan, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Lebanon, Haiti, Chad, C.A.R., the London attacks, Ethiopia, Iran, U.S. presidential campaigns, Hurricane Katrina, and the revolutions in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine.
During breaks from conflict areas and war zones he regularly photographed Fashion Weeks in major cities.
In 2006, Thomas photographed the New York Marathon while participating himself.
Thomas remained in Georgia after the 2008 war with Russia. This would lead to the Magnum Group project Georgian Spring, which was a starting point for a new, several-year-long engagement with the “New Georgia” under President M. Saakashvili. In 2012, Thomas photographed Nowrooz celebrations in Georgia. Dworzak spent 2009-2010 in Afghanistan, documenting the deployment of ISAF troops and their return home. In 2009, he also visited Iran to photograph Ashura. A National Geographic assignment on the Sochi Olympics became later the book Beyond Sochi.
In 2013, a commission for the Bruges Museum led him to photograph the memory of WWI. This has since become an ongoing project concerning the legacy of the First World War around the world, which he plans to finish in 2018, 100 years after the end of the conflict.
Since 2011 he is also represented by Gallery Clair in Munich and St.Paul.
Always an avid collector, Thomas started gathering Instagram screenshots of a variety of subjects and has been grouping them together into ever-growing collections of Instagram artist scrapbooks. A final set of 20 of these books has been presented at the International Center of Photography, ICP, in New York from February 2017.
Besides his personal stories, Thomas Dworzak continues to cover international stories, including the 2015 Paris terror attacks, Pokemon Go!, the 2016 U.S. elections, and the run-up to the 2017 French presidential elections.
When covering the escalation of the refugee crisis in 2015, he concieved the idea of “Europe - a photographic guide for refugees,” which was produced and distributed free of charge to migrants with the support of a Magnum Foundation Emergency Grant and AFAC in 2016.
Dworzak has also been teaching a number of workshops.
At the June 2017 70th AGM in New York, Dworzak was elected President of Magnum.