Kiana Hayeri

Kiana Hayeri grew up in Tehran and moved to Toronto as a teenager. She took up photography to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps. In 2014, she moved to Kabul and lived there for nearly a decade. Her work often explores migration, adolescence, identity, and sexuality in conflict zones.

Hayeri has received numerous awards, including the Tim Hetherington Visionary Award and the James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting in 2020; the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 2021; the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 2022; the Carmignac Photojournalism Award in 2024; and the World Press Photo Prize in 2025 and 2026. She was part of the 2022 New York Times team that won The Hal Boyle Award and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting in the same year. 

A TED fellow, a National Geographic Explorer grantee, and a regular contributor to The New York Times, Hayeri is currently based in Sarajevo, covering stories from Afghanistan, Syria, the Balkans, and beyond. Her 2024 photobook When Cages Fly received many accolades, including winning Pictures of the Year’s Photography Book of the Year, and she also published No Woman’s Land in 2025.