Tanya Habjouqa was born in Jordan and educated in the United States, receiving her masters in Global Media and Middle Eastern Politics from the University of London SOAS. She began freelance photography in Texas, where she documented migrant communities and urban poverty before returning to the Middle East. Habjouqa has spent the last seven years documenting for media, academia, and humanitarian agencies inside Iraq, Darfur, Lebanon, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
She is known for gaining unique access to sensitive gender, social and human rights stories in the Middle East. Projects have included heroin addiction under Israeli occupation, Israeli and Palestinian transexuals, and migrant worker abuse in Jordan. She has worked on the front lines in Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur, and Gaza— documenting ordinary people affected by conflict. She has worked on the front lines in Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur, and Gaza— documenting ordinary people affected by conflict.
Most recently, Habjouqa began documenting the everyday lives of Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip.
Currently based between Jerusalem and Amman, she is working on personal projects exploring socio-political dynamics, occupation, and subcultures of the Levant. She is a versatile writer, photographer, television news producer, and researcher.
Habjouqa received the 2007 Clarion Award for Press Photography for her coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah war for Bloomberg and the 2006 Global Health Council award for humanitarian photography with her Darfur coverage. She is published in the Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, Focus, Jerusalem Report, Beirut Daily Star, Business Week, NOX, Conde Naste, and the academic journal: Cultures of Resistance. Regular clients include Bloomberg, UNDP, USAID Iraq & West Bank/Gaza, and the Academy for Educational Development.