Photographer wins award for book on families in war-torn Syria
In July, she received the 23rd Kaiko Takeshi Nonfiction Award for her work 'Siria no Kazoku' ('Syrian families'), which portrays her Syrian husband's family and others impacted by the country's civil war.
'I initially planned to depict the lives of refugees, but the collapse of the Assad regime last year changed everything,' said Komatsu, 42.
Komatsu made a name for herself in 2006, when she became the first Japanese woman to scale K2, the world's second-highest peak at 8,611 meters, and won the Uemura Naomi Adventure Award.
Captivated by the lives of people in deserts and grasslands, she later became a photographer.
In 2013, Komatsu married a Syrian man she met while traveling. She now lives in Tokyo with her husband and two sons.
During the novel coronavirus pandemic, she worked as an Uber Eats delivery person, carrying her children on an electric bicycle, to support her reporting trips to Syria.
A native of Akita, Komatsu said she learned how deeply people are connected to the land where they were born and raised by watching her grandparents toil in the rice paddies.
'I think my childhood memories have helped me empathize with people whose dear old homes were destroyed by civil war or refugees who were driven out of their homelands,' she said.
Her award-winning work serves as a self-portrait, capturing her journey as a photographer and the wife of a Syrian man who has witnessed history unfold—from the intensifying civil war to the lives of refugees in foreign lands and the fall of a dictatorship.
Her work is scheduled to be published in November.
'Every corner of the world holds irreplaceable lives,' Komatsu said. 'I dedicate this book to the people starting over with high hopes in a reborn Syria.'
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