Stephanie Sinclair

Stephanie Sinclair (born 1973, Miami, FL) is an American photojournalist who focuses on gender and human-rights issues such as child marriage and self-immolation. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine and National Geographic.

Life and work

Sinclair graduated from the University of Florida with a B.S. in journalism and an outside concentration in fine art photography.

After college, Sinclair began working for the Chicago Tribune, which sent her to cover the beginning of the war in Iraq. She later settled in Iraq and then in Beirut, Lebanon, covering the Middle East and South Asia for six years as a freelance photographer. Sinclair joined the VII Network upon its establishment in 2008, and became a full member of VII in 2009.

She first encountered child marriage in 2003 while working on a project about self-immolation in Afghanistan. “All the victims she met had been married very young, some only 9 years old, and to much older men.” From 2003–2005 Sinclair photographed young Afghan women who had burned themselves. Most had been married between age 9 and 13. The result was her contribution to the 2010 Whitney Biennial exhibition, “Self-Immolation in Afghanistan: A Cry for Help.”

In 2005, her work was featured on The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer in a segment called "Picturing Iraq."

The February 2010 issue of National Geographic included Sinclair's project on polygamy in America. Pictures from the series were featured in The New York Times Magazine on July 27, 2008.

Her photo series, “Child Brides,” examines “how children continue to be forced into marriage in more than 50 countries around the world.” The project was the result of eight years of work in Afghanistan, Nepal, Ethiopia, India, and Yemen.

In 2012, Sinclair and Jessica Dimmock made a short documentary, “Too Young to Wed,” about an Ethopian girl married at age 11.

In 2016, the BBC credited Sinclair for documenting efforts of some African leaders campaigning for the rights of girls at risk of forced or child-age marriage. Among others, she has documented the work of Thobeka Madiba Zuma, a First Lady of South Africa and Esther Lungu, First Lady of Zambia are among those leading the effort.

Personal life

In 2011, Sinclair’s mother suffered a brain injury. Sinclair said: “When you share the experience of someone you love having a brain injury — of becoming a different person — there’s an instant intimacy.”