Quote: "I like the fact that I am not in control, that the photographs are what happens, rather than the result only of the decision I make. You could say that’s the downside of photography, but it’s also why it is magic."
Thomas Dworzak joined Magnum Photos in 2000 and became a full Member in 2004.

German, b. 1972

Thomas Dworzak was born in K?tzting, Germany, in 1972 and grew up in the small town of Cham in the Bavarian Forest. Towards the end of his high school studies, he began to travel and photograph in Europe and the Middle East, living in Avila, Prague and Moscow, and studying Spanish, Czech and Russian. After photographing the war in former Yugoslavia, he lived in Tbilisi, Georgia, from 1993 until 1998. He documented the conflicts in Chechnya, Karabakh and Abkhazia as well as working on a larger-scale project about the Caucasus region and its people.

Based in Paris from 1999, he covered the Kosovo crisis, mostly for US News and World Report, and he returned to Chechnya the same year. After the fall of Grozny in early 2000, he began a project on the impact of the war in Chechnya on the neighboring North Caucasus. He also photographed events in Israel, the war in Macedonia, and the refugee crisis in Pakistan.

After 9/11, Dworzak spent several months in Afghanistan on an assignment for the New Yorker. He returned to Chechnya in 2002. Since then he has photographed in Iraq, Iran and Haiti, and covered the revolutions in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. Based mainly in New York since 2004, Dworzak has been photographing the world of American politics and the impact of the war in Iraq. He is currently working on the projects M*A*S*H IRAQ, and Valiassr, an essay on Tehran's main avenue.

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

Awards

2005 Picture of the Year International Award
2003 POYs
2002 POYs
2001 World Press Photo (Spot News Story, 1st prize), Amsterdam, Netherlands
2001 Prix Bayeux , France
2001 Prix Terre d’Images Scoop d’Angers, France
2000 Prix Kodak, Kodak Young Photographer of the Year

Exhibitions
2006 Katrina (with Stanley Greene and Kadir van Lohuizen), Groenigen,
The Netherlands
2004/05 Off Broadway, New York, New York, USA; Arles, France; Berlin, Germany
2000 The Fall of Grozny, Visa pour l’Image, Perpignan, France
1997/98 Caucasus, Galerie Génériques, France; Maison Robert Doisneau, Gentilly, France
1995 La Vie comme dans un Miroir, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland

Books
2003 Taliban, Trolley, UK
2007 M*A*S*H Iraq, Trolley, UK