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[Catalog essay for thr Sony Gallery Show "War in Iraq" July 9 - September 11, 2003]

The Iraq war presented unparalleled opportunities and challenges for photojournalists.

To cover the events leading up to the war, and the war itself, The Associated Press marshalled its top photographers from around the world. Some joined the AP's Iraqi photographers in Baghdad during the months before the war and stayed throughout the fighting.

Others were "embedded" with U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps units on the ground, at sea and in the air. Still others operated independently of any military or government unit, traveling across the desert from Kuwait in the wake of the advancing American and British forces and from Iran through the mountains and valleys of Kurdistan.

Their mission was to capture both instant news and history for the more than one billion people around the world who receive their daily news from The Associated Press, via local newspapers, broadcast stations and national news agencies that subscribe to the AP.

The photographs in this exhibition are the work of 16 AP staffers and stringers who were part of the more than 100 AP reporters, photographers and editors who participated in the AP's Iraq war coverage. In addition, Associated Press Television News deployed about 120 persons for video coverage.

The AP photographs were shot with digital cameras and transmitted via satellite telephones and e-mails from locations as diverse as a hotel room in Baghdad, a military camp under fire in the desert, a hilltop in Kurdistan.

The Associated Press, a not-for-profit cooperative, is the world's oldest and largest news-gathering organization. Founded in 1848, its headquarters are in New York City. It has 242 bureaus around the world. It serves virtually all of the daily newspapers in the United States and has more than 15,000 media outlets in some 120 nations around the world.