Meet the woman who fights to go into war zones

March 22, 2026 — 5:00am

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At the turn of the century, Kate Geraghty was the first female Sydney Morning Herald photo-journalist to cover armed conflict, when she covered the Iraq War for three months. She has covered a couple of dozen wars since, and has won many prizes for her efforts. I spoke to the Herald’s chief photographer just after she touched down from her latest, a 10-day trip to Lebanon.

Fitz: Kate, I have to begin by asking, are you OK? I’ve seen the photos, and realise I’m talking to someone who must have seen the most appalling, grisly, haunting things imaginable in the last little while. The rest of us would be sleepless for weeks, just for having had a glimpse of what you’ve intimately documented.

KG: What we see is, yes, terrible and horrific – but we’re not the civilians who have to endure it. I get to fly home, to a home that is still standing.

Fitz: How did you get into photo-journalism in the first place?

KG: I’d always had a fascination for newspapers, even as a little girl, to the point that one of my first Christmas presents was a plastic typewriter. As to war, I grew up listening to the stories of my grandparents, who had left a shattered Germany just after WWII. So from an early age, I knew that it didn’t matter what side your country was on, it is civilians who bear the brunt of war and live with its aftermath for decades.

Fitz: So, after school you join the Albury Border-Mail, and in one edition, there were 27 photographs by you! A great grounding for a young one on her way.

KG: [Laughing.] Yes, we worked hard. We did lots of jobs in a day, or on a weekend.

Fitz: And looking up your story, I see that when the Border-Mail couldn’t afford to fly you to East Timor for that conflict in the late 1990s, you took holidays, flew yourself there, took deeply moving and powerful photos, and by the time you were on your way back, you were on your way forward, to the Herald – where then photo editor Mike Bowers successfully slogged through heavy editorial resistance to send you to the Iraq war.

KG: I think there was some view that as a woman I might not be safe, or at least less safe than the men journalists, but Mike backed me, and I went with journalist Tom Allard – an entire experience that I found very powerful.

Fitz: Sir Walter Scott once said, “One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation”. Is being in a war zone like that for you, the thrilling peak of your professional existence?

KG: Documenting the stories of people who are impacted by conflict feels very important but for me “thrill” is the wrong word. The importance of being there is that you’ve got a job to do, and that is to tell the civilian story, the impact of war.

Fitz: I worked a lot with Herald photographer Craig Golding, who could stand in a group of 25 photographers at a sports event, and somehow get the shot that defined it. How ’bout you? Is there a North Star that guides you? Are your eyes scanning all the time, framing things, perpetually examining how to best capture what you see? I have come to understand over the years how there’s a hundred more levels of sophistication to brilliant photography than pointing the camera at something interesting and pressing the button.

KG: I think it begins by understanding as much as you can of what is going on, what is the story behind it – so you can properly have a respect for what you’re seeing and what people are going through. And yes, you are scanning constantly, looking for that moment that can perfectly sum up what the population is enduring.

Fitz: And yet something that interests me in your technique, per Mike Bowers, is that you always keep both eyes open, even when one is staring down the barrel of a camera. Why is that?

KG: I started that during the Iraq invasion – so I could see what was kind of coming ... happening on the peripheral – in case, you know, people were coming up behind me, or things like that.

Fitz: How often have you personally felt unsafe in war zones?

KG: War is unsafe for everyone. I have never felt personally targeted but we take measures to mitigate threats. The most important thing for me is not to put those I am photographing in any danger or expose them.

Fitz: Are you more unsafe as a woman, often in lands where the history of treatment of women is nothing less than brutal?

KG: Airstrikes do not see gender. Being a woman has nothing to do with my work. On the ground, I have always been treated with dignity and respect and especially in Lebanon, which epitomises the hospitality the Middle East is renowned for.

Fitz: And yet since the Gaza war, Israel has been accused of being responsible for the deaths of around 250 media workers. They robustly deny targeting them, but among your fellow journalists in Lebanon, was it taken as given that Israel is a threat to journalists?

KG: In the past, being a journalist afforded you protection but this is no longer the case. We did not specifically ask our Lebanese colleagues their thoughts on this issue but in recent years they have [suffered] an escalation of violence and threats by the Israeli Defence Force. Two Israeli strikes in Lebanon on October 13, 2023, killed one and injured six journalists and according to the International Federation of Journalists, last December, Lebanese television journalists from Al Mayadeen came under direct attacks by the Israeli military. Earlier this month, the Al Manar TV (Hezbollah affiliated outlet) building in Beirut’s southern suburbs was targeted. The general consensus among journalists is that no one is safe.

Fitz: When I joined the Herald 40 years ago, the running gag was that the aptitude test for the Herald’s photographers was that “if you had to choose between taking a prize-winning photograph of a capsizing Sydney ferry on a black and stormy afternoon, or helping to save 20 women and children ... what kind of film would you use?” Have you ever had to put the camera down and get involved in things you see?

KG: [Softly.] Of course. So there have been many times in my career, where we’ve had to assist in whatever manner we can, and then document what we’ve seen. It is impossible not to have empathy for their suffering, and if you can help alleviate it, you must.

Fitz: Which brings us to the current conflagration in what started out as the Iran war, and is now close to the Middle East war. A lot of people won’t have properly focused on why Israel is sending missiles, and boots on the ground, into Lebanon. Can you give a quick summation, based on your aforementioned study of what any conflict is about?

KG: This is the third conflict that I have covered in Lebanon. The first was in 2006, where I formed very deep relationships with the people I worked with and the people I met – and I have kept in constant contact over the years. So, I’ve followed closely why the population is once again under attack. In 2024, there was also a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and both sides agreed to a ceasefire. Both sides have accused each other of breaking that ceasefire.

Fitz: Israel defines Hezbollah purely as a terrorist organisation. Do you?

KG: Hezbollah has members of parliament, a humanitarian arm, hospitals, schools, financial institutions. They’re a part of the Lebanese fabric of society. I’ve never seen a Hezbollah fighter. You don’t get to see that when you’re there covering it. But Israel believes that Hezbollah is a threat to Israel and so they target certain areas and locations and people that are connected to Hezbollah due to that belief.

Fitz: And if you were to be asked your opinion, would you give an answer, or would you decline to reply?

KG: My job is to capture the images of what’s happening on the ground. I would leave the analysis and the political reasoning behind what’s happening to academics, politicians and those like the journalist I accompanied on the last trip, David Crowe, who is far more in a position to answer.

Fitz: Do you have, nevertheless, a strong opinion on the rights and wrongs of it?

KG: My strong opinion is that civilians always bear the brunt of war, and the aggressors of any conflict don’t really think about the civilian impact. So that’s what I care about, telling the story of the impact on the civilians.

Fitz: One of those stories you and Crowe told is of a fellow whose home had just been blown up by an Israeli missile, who showed complete defiance, by planting a Hezbollah flag where his house once stood, saying “I’m happy to give this house for the sake of the resistance, for the country. After this war, Israel should be gone.”

KG: The population is tired. They’ve had years and years of being displaced and facing conflict, but their defiance has not wavered. So, yeah, it didn’t surprise me to hear that.

Fitz: But I was stunned to read last week that there are more than 450,000 Lebanese people displaced right now. Somehow, in the rest of the conflagration, I, and I think many others, had lost focus on that level of horror. Was it carnage over there?

‘Everywhere is full’: Beirut’s streets, schools, docks become makeshift shelter for desperate families

KG: [Quietly.] The statistics are horrific, over 960 people have been killed and over 2400 have been injured. I believe the number is now very close to a million people displaced. One in five people are displaced in Lebanon right now. So when an evacuation warning is sent by the Israeli government, people are given sometimes as little as an hour to pack up their life. Many don’t have time. There are ... traffic jams. People will run or walk out of an area. There are people sleeping on footpaths, in movie cinemas. Schools have closed for education, and are now sheltering families who have had to flee their homes.

Fitz: In that kind of scene, with that level of displacement, where did you and David Crowe stay? When I was in Beirut for the start of the Gulf war in 1991, I tried to check into the Commodore Hotel, because I had read a PJ O’Rourke story that war correspondents could pick “the sniper side” or “the car bomb side”, and was entranced.

KG: I’ve also stayed at the Commodore. We stayed there during the 2006 war, but it has now closed its doors. And so we now stay in another hotel in an area that is close enough to go to the areas under attack.

Fitz: In my case, I wasn’t there as a war correspondent and when the Gulf war started, I felt an immediate and visceral resentment to being a Westerner in Beirut at such a sensitive time. Without any hesitation, I looked them right in the eye and said with great force: “TAXI!” In your case, are they looking to you to get their story out, and do they say so?

KG: Yes. People generally say, “welcome”, and once they establish what you are doing, they add, “Thank you for coming, and telling our story”. The only time it was not like that, I was photographing a severely wounded child in the Iraq war, whose father, once he knew I was from Australia said, “You did this, too. Your country is a part of this.“

Fitz: And how did you respond?

KG: I agreed. But I added, “My job is to tell the story of what happened, and the consequences of war on civilians”. He said, “Welcome ... and thank you.“

Fitz: Thank you, Kate. Allow me to say, the rest of us journalists walk taller because of the work you do, and we are all very proud of you.

KG: Thank you. That’s very kind. I would like to thank the Lebanese people for trusting us with their story while they endure the unimaginable.

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