Ben Lowy had been traveling the world as a war photographer for a decade when his first son was born. His career in conflict photography had begun in 2001 when, while taking time off from college, an encounter with a photo editor in Paris led him to the West Bank. The next summer, while back covering the Second Intifada, Lowy was beaten within an inch of his life. Lowy covered a variety of dangerous conflicts in subsequent years. In 2003 he photographed the Beltway sniper attacks; he was later embedded within Iraqi and United States military units and covered the Iraq war until 2008. He worked in Afghanistan and Libya, pioneering the use of cell-phone photography for conflict photojournalism. But the birth of his son in 2010 affirmed what Lowy had already known: his career as a war photographer wasn’t sustainable. He’d lost friends, and suffered from PTSD. He decided it was time to do something else. | 
