“Ninety per cent of the photography I have learnt has come from experimentation in the field,” Siddiqui once wrote.
“What I enjoy most is capturing the human face of a breaking story. I shoot for the common man who wants to see and feel a story from a place where he can’t be present himself.”
Ahmad Danish Siddiqui was born on May 19, 1983. He became a journalist after a Master’s degree in Mass Communications from Delhi’s Jamia Milia Islamia University.
Siddiqui joined Reuters after stints as a correspondent with the Hindustan Times newspaper and the TV Today channel.
Last year, while covering sectarian unrest in a Delhi suburb, Siddiqui and Ghoshal saw a Muslim man being beaten by a frenzied Hindu mob.
The images were widely featured in international media, highlighting the danger of wider conflagration between India’s Hindu majority and sizeable Muslim minority. Siddiqui, a Muslim, had a narrow escape when the mob turned their attention on him.
Those photographs were part of a selection of Reuters pictures of the year in 2020.
Siddiqui provided video and text from his assignments as well as photographs.
On his final assignment, he was embedded with Afghan special forces in the city of Kandahar.
Earlier this week he was travelling with a convoy of commandos when it came under heavy fire from Taliban militants on the outskirts of Kandahar. He captured the drama in pictures, film and words. — Reuters
