Byron
Smith
Byron Smith is an award-winning photojournalist focusing on human interest
stories. Born in Brooklyn and raised in in rural Warwick, N.Y., he graduated
from Boston University in 2008. After numerous internships he landed a
staff photographer position at The Sentinel and Enterprise. After two years,
he moved to Boston to freelance, eventually moving to NYC in 2011. He
has covered the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Sandy Hookshooting in
Newtown, C.T., unrest at the 2014 World Cup in Rio, the European refugee
crisis in Greece to most recently, the Mosul Offensive. Smith is a regular
contributor to The New York Times and The New York Daily News.
He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Mosul Offensive 2016
Nearly two years since the Islamic State took the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, the Iraqi
Army launched an offensive to wrest the city back from the insurgency in October of 2016.
While the forward push of the Iraqi Security Forces has slowed down after a month of fighting,
the exodus of residents fleeing the violence has not. According to estimates, it is predicted
that the number of internally displaced will hover around one million people.
My purpose here was to expose how the clash between the U.S. backed Iraqi Security Forces
and ISIS was effecting the civilians caught in the middle. Instead of focusing on the frontline
action, I tried to document the cause and effect of the conflict. These are images taken from my
first time being in a war zone, a place I thought I’d feel at home for one reason or another. I went
because I never felt fully invested in the tragedies occurring in my own backyard; I wanted to be
a part of significant, international history and document it as it was unfolding. There was always
this gnawing feeling, an itch that needed to be scratched. Here is the product of me scratching
back at it.
Byron Smith . Mosul Offensive 20 16 Series . 2016
Neighborhood children play around homes reduced to rubble in Qayyarah, a town near oil fields which ISIL set ablaze
while under retreat at the start of the Mosul offensive which began more than a month prior on November 27, 2016.
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