About Martin A. Sugarman
Martin Sugarman was an American photojournalist, sociologist and one-time professional surfer whose career took him from the beaches of Santa Monica to some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones. Before turning to photography in 1975, he worked as a figurative and landscape painter, a radio news director in Hawaii, and a competitive surfer — he won the 1965 LA County Surfing Championship and later co-founded the cult Southern California "waterfront culture" publication H2O Magazine. Sugarman's path into war photography began with a 1992 trip to document the social and cultural conditions of Mexico, followed by a transformative assignment in Bosnia and Croatia later that year. He was among the first photojournalists to reach the front lines of the Bosnian war and he returned to Sarajevo repeatedly — through shelling and sniper fire — to capture the human cost of the siege on soldiers, children and civilians. That work became his landmark 1993 book, God Be with You: War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and was widely used by human rights organizations and the international press to expose the conflict to the world. He went on to document other flashpoints, including Kashmir, the Siachen Glacier, Cuba, the Palestinian territories, Chechnya, Tibet, and Afghanistan, publishing several further photo books. Sugarman earned his Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA in 2001 and continued painting and exhibiting his work — including the retrospective Between the Tides: War and Peace — until his death in 2021 at age 74.
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