Jerome Delay is AP’s chief photographer for Africa, based in Johannesburg. After working as an AP stringer in Denver, Colorado and as a staff photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Washington, DC, Delay has been on staff with the AP in a variety of roles: chief photographer in Jerusalem, staff photographer and international photo editor in Paris and international photographer based in London and in Paris.

He has covered the White House, the Calgary Winter Olympics and World Cup soccer, as well as conflicts all over the world: the Middle East (Israel, Palestine, South Lebanon, Iraq), Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, the Congo), the Balkans (Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia), Northern Ireland, Haiti, Kashmir and Afghanistan. (AP)

When I took the Mali assignment a month ago, I knew it would be challenging. I wondered how, in an asymmetrical war (as the French brass likes to call it), I would photograph a pick-up full of Jihadists being taken out by a smart bomb dropped from a Mirage fighter jet in the middle of the desert. Remember rule number one in photography: be there!

Jerome Delay is the Africa Chief Photographer of the Associated Press.

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