Damir Šagolj is a Bosnian national born and raised in Sarajevo. After living with his family and studying power engineering in Moscow, Damir returned to his hometown Sarajevo just before the war broke out in 1992. When the war ended in 1995, Damir was a soldier whose engineering career seemed like a distant dream shattered by a nightmare – this is when he turned to photojournalism.  After a short period as a contractor for Sipa Press, Damir joined Reuters in early 1996 as their Bosnia-based photographer. The first international assignments came in 1997 – a civil conflict in Albania and a trip to Iran. He spent most of his first decade at Reuters covering conflicts in the Balkans and Middle East. In 2009 Damir moved to Bangkok, Thailand and focused on news stories in Asia. In 2015 Damir moved with family to China, where he stays until 2018 as Reuters chief photographer. Aside from stories in China and among other international assignments, Damir covers the war on drugs in the Philippines, the Rohingya refugee crisis and other ethnic issues in Myanmar and Bangladesh, tensions in and around North Korea…  In late 2018 Damir leaves Reuters and returns to Sarajevo where he currently teaches photography and contemporary documentary approach at the Academy of Performing Arts of the University of Sarajevo. He was a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his Iraq war coverage and a 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner as part of the Reuters team that covered the Rohingya crisis.