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PICTURE STORY
Photojournalist Erin Trieb turned a chance offer for access into a photo essay on a unit of Kurdish women fighting ISIS in Syria.
GIVEN THE DANGERS facing journalists who try to travel in northern Iraq and Syria to cover the fight against ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), it's a challenge to find stories that aren't already being told. So when Erin Trieb-a veteran freelancer who has been embedded with U.S. forces in Afghanistan-was offered a chance to shoot a typically closed-off all-female unit of Kurdish volunteer soldiers in Syria, "I jumped at the chance," she tells PDN via email. "When you are asked that question, as a photographer, you don't say no."
The Austin, Texas-based Trieb had been working in Kurdistan for , and was hoping to embed with the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters when she got the general to embed with the Kurdish Women's Protection Unit (YPJ).
While wasn't a difficult decision for Trieb, any sort of travel in northern Iraq can be perilous for westerners, and recent executions by ISIS have only heightened tensions. To get to the YPJ, Trieb had to secure rides for a 12-hour journey over the Kurdistan-Syria border, talking her way through checkpoints along the road.
"During one border crossing, I had to get in and out of four different vehicles, each one driving me closer to the border but not driving more than a mile," Trieb recalls. "There is some contention between certain military and political factions, so a particular group wearing a...