Jérôme Sessini

Jérôme Sessini was born in Vosges, France, in 1968. He is one of the world’s most prolific and respected names working in the sensitive field of conflict zones and has been dispatched to war-torn countries, including Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Libya, for international publications. As well as reporting on the front lines, he has covered social issues such as drug-related violence on the streets of Mexico and anti-government protests in Ukraine. Through his work, he is constantly learning, adapting and evolving.

In 2016, he documented the Kurdish Peshmerga offensive against Islamic State in the city of Bashiq before crossing the region to cover Iraqi forces pushing towards Mosul. In 2017, he traveled to remote villages in Cambodia with Samrith Vaing, documenting the life of indigenous minorities facing forced eviction. Since 2018, Sessini has been documenting the opioid crisis in the United States, where he has traveled to Ohio and Philadelphia to create intimate portraits of the people and places ravaged by drug misuse.

Sessini’s work has been published by prestigious newspapers and magazines, including the New Yorker, Time and Stern. His images have also been shown in multiple solo exhibitions around the world, including at the Rencontres d’Arles, Bibliothèque Nationale François-Mitterrand, French Ministry of Culture, International Center of Photography and the Barbican.

Sessini joined Magnum Photos in 2012 and became a full member in 2016.