Aram Karim was born in 1978 in the Iraqi Kurdish village of Saraw near the border with Iran. In 1979, at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, the Baath government transferred his family to a camp close to Sulaymaniyah where they stayed as internally displaced people until 1985. Aram was among the first photographers to join Metrography in 2009. He embraced photography because of an inner drive to document suffering in his country. “When we were refugees, there were no visual documents of what we were going through created by locals. We only knew what other people told us.”

Born in 1983 in Dukan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Bnar was forced to flee to Iran with her family in 1991. She decided to become a photographer in 2009 when she realized that there were only male photographers documenting her country. “I think of what I went through when I meet people who have been displaced. We are in the middle of a huge humanitarian emergency at the moment in my country and I am driven to talk to the people, listen to their stories and do my best to document them. I know what it’s like because I was a refugee myself.”

In 1987, the year Hawre Khalid was born, his family was forced from their home in Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein’s regime. In 1989 they returned to Kirkuk, but were displaced again in 1991 when Saddam Hussein’s troops invaded Kurdistan. Khalid became interested in photography in the early 2000’s when his uncle sent him a camera from Holland. After finishing journalism at the University of Sulaymaniyah in 2007 he immediately started working as a photojournalist. Khalid’s work has been published widely in international newspapers and magazines such as Der Spiegel, The Sunday Times, Le Monde, Newsweek Japan and Aljazeera.

Rawsht Twana was born in Qaladze in 1988. When he was born Saddam Hussein moved the entire population of Qaladze to the village of Xabat close to Erbil. Three years later, during the Kurdish uprising against the Baath regime, his family had to escape towards the Iranian border. “When we were fleeing I remember a car with 35 people in it and the driver who refused to take us. I was with my sister, my two brothers and my mother. I remember having only one shoe and we had to walk the whole way.” Rawsht has been with Metrography since 2009.

Seivan was a year old when her family had to flee Iraq. She grew up in northern Iran and only returned to Iraq in October 2012. She studied psychology at university before turning to photography. Seivan started working for local Kurdish media in 2013 and went on to become a freelance photographer in 2015. She now covers the news in the north of Iraq for AP and collaborates on visual projects with the Metrography photo agency. Her pictures have been published internationally and she often works with UNICEF and UNESCO.

Sebastian Meyer is an award winning photographer and filmmaker. His photographs have been published in numerous international publications including TIME Magazine, Sunday Times Magazine, FT Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times. Meyer has made films for National Geographic, PBS, Channel 4 News, CNN, HBO, and many others. From 2009 Meyer has been based in northern Iraq where he co-founded Metrography, the first Iraqi photo agency.

Campbell MacDiarmid is a New Zealand freelance journalist interested in conflict, people affected by conflict, and international humanitarian law. He has a background in law and is a Munk School Fellow in Global Journalism at the University of Toronto. He has reported from Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq and Syria. He currently lives in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.

Cathy Otten is a British journalist covering Iraq, Kurds and the war with ISIS for The Independent, Al Jazeera English, the BBC, CS Monitor and Deutsche Welle, among others. She is based in Iraqi Kurdistan and is a regular commentator on TV and radio.

Radwan Taleb is a Syrian short-story writer and playwright. His award-winning short-story collection 'Hablaham and Bangolas' was published by the Syrian Ministry of Culture. In 2004 he started his long career with Leish Theatre Troupe in Damascus. Two of Radwan's short narrative screenplays were filmed in 2013 and he has finished his first novel 'My Uncle is the Horse.' He lives in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan.

Sofia is an Erbil-based print and online journalist specializing in the Middle East. She is currently reporting on the political and humanitarian crisis unfolding in Iraq and Syria, particularly in the Kurdish regions. She writes for The Telegraph, The Economist and The Times among others. She has an MA in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King’s College London and in International Journalism from City University London.

Dario is an independent photography professional. He co-founded the PanAut Collective in 2012 to promote dialogue and exploration around visual storytelling. In 2013 he interned at NOOR Images and joined the newly founded digital magazine ABOUT Photography. He later worked as a project coordinator, co-curator and production assistant at 10b Photography in Rome until July 2014. His work as a photographer focuses on international social issues while questioning the medium of photography itself and the ways in which it affects our lives. He is currently based in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq where he’s the photo-editor and project manager at the Metrography photo agency.

After studying photography and photojournalism, Carini worked as photo editor for NOOR Images in Amsterdam. In 2012, together with an international community of authors, he founded the PanAut Collective, a platform for dialogue, exploration and production around the visual narrative. Carini’s main objective is to be part of, inspire and push forward a cultural revolution in the ways and forms we produce, consume and process images and visual documents. He lives and works in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, where he is the Editor in Chief of Metrography, the first Iraqi photo agency.