Documenting a Besieged City: In Mosul, Iraq, with...

Documenting a Besieged City: In Mosul, Iraq, with Photojournalist Cengiz Yar

To see more of Cengiz’s photography, follow @cengizyar on Instagram.

Cengiz Yar (@cengizyar) has his #EyesOn the humanitarian crisis gripping Mosul, Iraq. Over the last six months, he’s documented the exodus of civilians from the besieged city, as Iraqi government forces continue an offensive to expel Islamic State fighters. “There’s a wide spectrum of emotions,” he says of the thousands of people fleeing their homes daily, in addition to the 300,000 who have already left since October. “It’s everything from extreme desperation to exhaustion to elation.” It’s the 30-year-old American photojournalist’s most recent chapter of years spent working in the region, where he first traveled to report on Syrian refugees.

“I wish I got to see it 10 years ago,” he says of Mosul. “It’s a beautiful city. I was walking near the old city last week, and half a block away from that, there were these beautiful, old doorways for this building — intricately carved doorways that reminded me very much of Aleppo. I wish I got to see that and knew what it was like for people before.”

by via Instagram Blog