Norbert Schiller

Norbert Schiller is a Mint Press photojournalist, creative producer and frequent contributor. Norbert has lived and worked in the Middle East and Africa as a news photographer for over 25 years with major news organizations including the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, United Press International, the New York Times and Der Spiegel. He covered three Iraq wars, conflicts and famine in the Horn of Africa, Salafist insurgencies in Egypt and North Africa and the Arab-Israeli conflict, to name a few.

Syria Part IV: An Obsession With Trains Takes Me To Qamishli

My colleague was obsessed with trains, so I thought he dragged the Cairo press corps across the Syrian desert just to visit this train station.

Norbert Schiller
By Norbert Schiller

During the 1990s, I had a lucrative working arrangement with a German news magazine as a photographer. And over the course of the decade, I traveled with the magazine’s correspondent throughout North Africa, the Middle East and occasionally locations beyond. My colleague was obsessed with trains. No matter where we traveled, there was no getting

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Syria, Paradise Lost: Part III

Christians and Muslims living in Maaloula were immune from war until September when opposition fighters, including an al-Qaida affiliate, besieged the town.

Norbert Schiller
By Norbert Schiller

Before the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, the 360-kilometer highway linking the capital of Damascus with Syria’s largest city of Aleppo to the north, was the most widely traveled road in all Syria. It was also the corridor linking visitors with the country’s most treasured archeological sites and cultural landmarks. Upon leaving Damascus,

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Syria, Paradise Lost: Part II

Aleppo as I knew it, before the devastation.

Norbert Schiller
By Norbert Schiller

This is part of a series of “diaries” by veteran photojournalist Norbert Schiller, reflecting on his world travels in decades past: I was driving from the Beqaa Valley over the mountains toward Beirut, during a recent visit to Lebanon, when I received a text message on my mobile phone. I glanced down and noticed that it was a message welcoming me

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Syria, Paradise Lost: Part I

Remembering visits to Syria’s lesser-known sites from antiquity, now threatened by conflict.

Norbert Schiller
By Norbert Schiller

This is part of a series of "diaries" by veteran photojournalist Norbert Schiller, reflecting on his world travels in decades past: Up until the beginning of the civil war, in the spring of 2011, I traveled to Syria regularly for nearly two decades. Unlike most journalists, who had a difficulty procuring a Syrian visa, I had it relatively easy.

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Returning Home To A Post-Revolutionary Egypt: One Photojournalist’s Diary

It’s unfortunate to see how much Egypt has deteriorated since the “Arab Spring,” that had sparked so much hope and renewed faith in the country’s future.

Norbert Schiller
By Norbert Schiller

Over the past three decades I spent more time in Egypt than anywhere else. I first visited the country in the late 1970s as a traveler, and then returned a few years later to study at the American University in Cairo. I also began my career in journalism in Egypt in 1984, before being posted to other places throughout the Arab world. In 1990, I was

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25th Anniversary of Iran-Iraq War: The Beginning Of Iraq’s Demise

A photojournalist’s tale of the immediate aftermath of “Flanders Fields, without the mud.”

Norbert Schiller
By Norbert Schiller

This spring marks a very significant anniversary for me.  Not only is it 10 years since the 2003 Iraq conflict, but it also marks 25 years since I first covered Iraq’s final offensive to reclaim land which was captured by Iran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Foreign journalists were rarely allowed on either battlefront during the Iran-Iraq

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Remembering Moammar Gadhafi: Distraction, Entertainment In The Middle East

The Arab Spring has taken its toll on a number of iconic leaders, which has included the likes of Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is still fighting to stay in power.  None, though, can be compared to the charismatic and often unpredictable Col. Moammar Gadhafi. It’s been just […]

Norbert Schiller
By Norbert Schiller
Moamar Gadhafi touring the Egyptian Museum late in the night with Egypt's Minister of Information Safwat El Sherif (left) in March 1999. (Photo Norbert Schiller)

The Arab Spring has taken its toll on a number of iconic leaders, which has included the likes of Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is still fighting to stay in power.  None, though, can be compared to the charismatic and often unpredictable Col. Moammar Gadhafi. It’s been just over a year since

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