Digital Camera Fiend - A Camera Review

It’s hard to catch your breath in this no-holds-barred account of Deborah Copaken Kogan’s life as a female photojournalist. Kogan traveled to the most dangerous corners of the world during her 20s and 30s with a camera around her neck, encountering a host of unique characters, political situations, and romances along the way.

Flakmagazine.com says, “At 22, more self-confident than knowledgeable, Kogan traveled to Afghanistan with a handsome, but mentally unstable, French photographer named Pascal to cover the Soviet Army’s pullout at the end of the war in that country. Pascal abandoned her there, leaving Kogan to her own resources to arrange passage into the interior, to the Hindu Kush Mountains. Attaching herself to a gang of Afghan guerillas, she lived in caves for a month, watched men blown up by landmines and witnessed children dying of preventable illnesses.”
And that’s just the first chapter.

As an author, Kogan is forthcoming and frank about her life and loves–a refreshing approach, and rare for a memoir written on recent events. Kogan leaves it to readers to draw their own conclusions and judgements on her life, and she doesn’t seem to care what those may be.

This book was recommended to me by a very talented, veteran photojournalist. A must on the reading list of any aspring photojournalist–though not necessarily their parents.