Masrat Zahra


Masrat Zahra is a freelance Kashmiri photojournalist. She focuses on stories about local communities and women. Zahra won the 2020 "Anja Niedringhaus Courage" in Photojournalism award from International Women's Media Foundation.

Biography

Zahra is from Hawal, Srinagar, and studied journalism at Central University of Kashmir. She photographs the Kashmir conflict and her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Humanitarian, TRT World, Al Jazeera, The Caravan, The Sun, The News Arab and The World Weekly.
In April 2018, she was labelled as a police informer after she shared an image from an encounter site on her Facebook.
On 3 August 2019, before the clampdown in Jammu and Kashmir, she was asked to submit work for Journalists Under Fire, an exhibition in New York city which was organised by United Photo Industries and St Ann's Warehouse in collaboration with Committee to Protect Journalists. On the same day, she was contacted by a French magazine for assignments with Real Kashmir F.C., a sports magazine. Due to a communications blackout that started on 5 August 2019, these offers could not be fulfilled.
Zahra was booked under the Unlawful Activities Act by Jammu and Kashmir Police in April 2020 for some of her Facebook posts. The police had said that they had been informed that Zahra is uploading antinational posts.

Awards

In 2020, Zahra won the Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism award from the International Women's Media Foundation.

Personal life

Zahra belongs to a Muslim family in Hawal, Srinagar. Her father is a truck driver and mother is a homemaker.