Product Review

Fresh out of college and passionate about photography, Deborah Copaken Kogan moved to Paris in 1988 and began knocking on photo agency doors, begging to be given a photojournalism assignment. Within weeks she was on the back of a truck in Afghanistan, the only woman€"and the only journalist€"in a convoy of mujahideen, the rebel €œfreedom fighters€ at the time. She had traveled there with a handsome but dangerously unpredictable Frenchman, and the interwoven stories of their relationship and the assignment set the pace for Shutterbabe€s six chapters, each covering a different corner of the globe, each linked to a man in Kogan€s life at the time.

From Zimbabwe to Romania, from Russia to Haiti, Kogan takes her readers on a heartbreaking yet surprisingly hilarious journey through a mine-strewn decade, seamlessly blending her personal battles€"sexism, battery, life-threatening danger€"with the historical ones€"wars, revolution, unfathomable suffering€"it was her job to record.