The photojournalist, who rose to fame after being captured by Syrian rebels, opens up about returning to the front line and the complex nature of bravery.
“Some people like to jump off airplanes, and some people like to do a lot of drugs and push their limits. For me, it’s war,” says famed war photographer Jonathan Alpeyrie. When I speak to Alpeyrie over Skype in early January, he’s enjoying some much-deserved respite at his mother’s home in Mexico. The seasoned photographer, who has been photographing conflict zones since he was 25-years-old, garnered a slew of media attention in 2018 when he released his book The Shattered Lens: A War Photographer’s True Story of Captivity and Survival in Syria, about his experience being captured and held captive by Syrian rebels in 2013. Alpeyrie’s telling and often haunting photos have documented over 14 wars worldwide, from Africa to Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Of late, Alpeyrie has immersed himself in cartel communities in Mexico and Columbia to photograph the war on drugs and captured harrowing images of the covid-19 pandemic in Brazil, as well as New York’s infamously eerie lockdown, where Alpeyrie calls home.
For Alpeyrie, war was always in sight, even as a child growing up in France and New York. Coming from a military family, he entertained the idea of becoming a soldier himself, “my attachment to history has defined me tremendously,” he explains. However, he quickly realized that following orders didn’t suit his Type A personality. Instead, he embarked on a life as a lone ranger, embedding himself in conflict zones to provide those of us at home with “a clear understanding, in a historical sense, of what is happening.”
Alpeyrie’s “baptism of fire” was in the Republic of Georgia in 2004, when a Georgian assault group clashing with Ossetian troops took Alpeyrie on a military operation to take control of part of a hill. On this mission, after partaking in some liquid courage alongside the soldiers, Alpeyrie realized war was not only his calling but something he felt inextricably bound to. “It was then. It’s an addiction, and this addiction, like every other addiction, comes home to roost at some point. So then it’s for you to manage, and that’s not always easy.”
With a risk of stating the glaringly obvious, Alpeyrie is unusually daring. His book details him being tied to a radiator and beaten by Syrian rebels, and held captive for 81 days before a prominent Syrian businessman paid his ransom in an attempt to get off the U.S. no-fly list. Despite this traumatic turn of events, when the Russo-Ukrainian war broke out six months later, Alpeyrie was (figuratively speaking) on the first plane out. “I’m one of these people who would rather face something. If I am not facing it, I keep thinking about it. I just need to deal with it.” Although the trip was not without its triggers, “there were so many checkpoints, and I was captured at a checkpoint, so it brought back a lot of difficult memories,” Alpeyrie believes that getting back on the horse in a timely manner was crucial for his mental state. “It was very useful just to force yourself to go through it; then it passes, mostly,” he says.
His yearning to continually return to the front lines—despite more close calls with danger than would deter most people for a lifetime—is something Alpeyrie has thought about at length. “Do you think there’s a common denominator between those willing to step into dangerous arenas, compared to everybody else?” I ask. He cites Free Solo, a documentary about rock climber Alex Honnold, as having a compelling take on the concept. The documentary poses the idea that Honnold’s brain may be wired differently; in a way that limits or entirely diminishes the fear factor. The lack of fear he experiences in relation to dangerous situations does not mean Alpeyrie is immune to human frustrations and anxieties, however—they just arise in different more run-of-the-mill circumstances, “I don’t like waiting in line. It makes me anxious. It’s stupid, and I get that, but I’m not anxious in harder situations. I think it has to do with the lack of control.” He does, however, iterate that risk is on a spectrum, and that he’s cognizant of his limits, “on a personal level, I know my limits. I have backed out of things when they were too crazy, but other times I did not. It’s always a calculated move. You have got to be able to know your limits because [otherwise] you get killed.”
Unsurprisingly, for someone with first-hand experience of the calamities of war, Alpeyrie harbors concerns about the state of modern warfare. “There is something dangerous about modern conflict,” he says. “We have put great separation between the person who kills and the person who is getting killed.” As someone who makes a point of infiltrating soldiers’ communities to gain a first-hand understanding of conflict, Alperie is more aware than most of how much military technology alters war’s landscape, “technology has created huge separation, and we are now using drones for killings; if you are the pilot a thousand miles away, it is not the same as stabbing someone.in war, usually, people have been in close quarters, they end up respecting their enemy better because it is eye to eye and there is something personal about it.”
On occasion, Alpeyrie will write the articles that accompany his images, mitigating the frustration he experiences when journalists use his photographs to promote a certain agenda, especially in a media landscape that can be far from objective. “Your photos can be used for political agenda by journalists; this happens every hour of every day. Sometimes when you give photos to agencies because it’s newsworthy and it gets published all over, and you have no control [about the story]… When it is a long term work I will try to do both,” he explains.
Despite his infatuation with conflict and desire to spread the truth, Alpeyrie won’t dedicate the rest of his life to photographing the front lines. “It’s a young man‘s game,” he says, “you have to count your blessings, I have been doing this for a long time.” His retirement from photojournalism, however, will not lead him to entertain other forms of photography. “When I do not want to be covering difficult things anymore is when I am done with photography,” he says. But for now, that time is in the distant future. In the next few weeks, Alpeyrie will pack up his camera and travel to South America for his next assignment, the details of which must remain under wraps for the sake of his safety.
