May 13, 2014

Photojournalist Camille Lepage killed in Central African Republic

located:	Central African Republic
editor:	Murat Suner

The French photojournalist Camille Lepage has been killed at the age of 26 in the Central African Republic. AP reports her body was discovered by French troops patrolling in the Bouar region in the west of the country.

After completing a journalism degree at Solent University in Southampton Lepage had moved to South Sudan in 2012 to cover the ongoing conflict in the Central African Republic.

In her insightful interview with the photographic blog PetaPixel from last October she explained why she decided to work as a photojournalist and spoke about her ongoing projects capturing the violence in South Sudan:

"Since I was very little, I've always wanted to go and live in a place where no one else wants to go, and cover in-depth conflict related stories … I can't accept that people's tragedies are silenced simply because no one can make money out of them... Throughout my journalism degree at Southampton Solent University in the UK, we studied a lot of journalism’s ethics. I became very keen on the duty of a journalist to tell stories and make them accessible to a broad audience...I also realized what the media agenda was, and how so many serious stories were missing from the headlines simply because they don’t fit within that agenda, or the advertising company’s interests. I can’t accept that people’s tragedies are silenced simply because no one can make money out of them. I decided to do it myself, and bring some light to them no matter what...As I mentioned, it’s so frustrating to be covering something so tragic, that no one wants to publish and that can’t see the public light apart from social media…"

Her unfinished work about the Nuba in Sudan's South Kordofan Region "You Will Forget Me" can be seen on her website.

Camille Lepage's work has been published in the Guardian, Le Monde, the Sunday Times, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and used by the BBC.