Scout Tufankjian

Although best known for her work documenting the Barack Obama campaign, Scout Tufankjian has spent the bulk of her career working in the Middle East, including four years working in the Gaza Strip. Her book on the 2007-2008 Obama campaign, Yes We Can: Barack Obama's History-Making Presidential Campaign was published in December of 2008 and was a New York Times and LA Times bestseller, selling out its first run of 55,000 copies a month before its release date. More recently, she has documented the aftermath of the Haitian Earthquake, and has been working in Brazil, the United States, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Ethiopia and Turkey, amongst other countries on a project documenting the global Armenian diaspora. In February she covered the Egyptian Revolution for iPad newspaper The Daily and since then has spent extensive time in Egypt covering the aftermath of the revolution, particularly its effects on the ultra-religious Salafi community. In the summer of 2012, she returned to the campaign trail as a photographer for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign. While working for Obama for America, an image that she took of the President and the First Lady hugging in Iowa became the most retweeted and the most liked photograph in Facebook's history. She speaks conversational Arabic and is based in Brooklyn, NY and Istanbul, Turkey. More of her work can be seen at www.scouttufankjian.com.