Known for war photography and documentary photographic journalism, Deborah Copaken has paved ways to bring emotional depth to her images. She was born in Boston and later moved to Adelphi, Maryland. She studied in Harvard with a focus in arts and letters and photography.

In her photographic career, she would go to places of conflict such as Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Romania, Pakistan, Israel, and the Soviet Union to capture current events. She received an Emmy for her producing work in Day One. To continue her pursuit in photography, she moved to Paris in the late 1980s and photographed Mujaheddin, a freedom fighter at the time.

Now, Copaken has been writing novels like Shutterbabe which captures her story of venturing out in the unknown of different nations with only her camera. She shares, “Stories are how we make sense of our lives. To tell a story is to own it: to own the narrative thread to own a piece of our past. And when we own a story when we put it in a tidy box and store it on a high shelf it becomes manageable so that whatever negative effects it’s been having on us are in theory lessened.”