Patrick Baz

Patrick Baz is a French-Lebanese photographer, born in Beirut in 1963. He was twelve when Lebanon’s civil war broke out in 1975. Living near the demarcation line separating Beirut’s Christian and Muslim sectors, Baz was at an early age stimulated by what was going on around him to take up photography. Lebanon became his training ground.

Between 1980 and 1988, he worked as a freelance photojournalist. His pictures were published in major international magazines such as Paris Match, Time, Newsweek, Stern, Der Spiegel, L’Express, l’Espresso, and more. In 1989, Agence France-Presse (AFP) gave him the opportunity to cover the First Intifada. He also built the first network of Palestinian photographers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Baz covered the First Gulf War in 1991, and later conflicts in Kurdistan, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is currently AFP’s photo manager for the MENA region, managing and editing a network of more than 70 photographers, while continuing to work as a photographer himself.

He recently covered the Arab revolutions in Egypt and Libya. Baz has twice previously been a member of the World Press Photo jury, and has been a World Press Photo tutor. He has also served on the juries of the Bayeux Calvados Award for War Correspondents, and other prestigious photo competitions. In 2009, he published his Iraq war photos in a book entitled Don’t Take My Picture, Iraqis Don’t Cry. Baz has twice won a POYi award.