In Northern Mali, photographer Ferhat Bouda chronicles the complex, confusing conflict that has entangled al Qaeda-linked jihadists, the Malian army, French-led international forces and the Tuaregs, an indigenous group that has been fighting for independence in the region for decades.

On October 6, 1973, Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israeli soldiers at the east bank of the Suez Canal. It was the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, and many soldiers were praying in synagogues. Photographer Micha Bar-Am covered the inside of a war that changed dynamics and psyches throughout the Middle East.

South African photographer Greg Marinovich spent years covering the rise of violence in his home country before the eventual death of the systemic racial discrimination policy of apartheid. During the transition to democracy, he found himself on the front lines of history.

As the United States and the world wait for the war in Afghanistan to come to a close, so do the allied soldiers still on the ground in the tumultuous country. Photojournalist Andrew Burton traveled to the region in January and again in March to get a better understanding of the war.

Gary Knight went to Iraq ahead of the conflict in 2003 to document the brewing war. He kept diaries of the events, which will be published alongside his photographs in an exhibition at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York, starting Thursday, March 14, in conjunction with the 10-year anniversary of the war’s start.

War is fraught with danger, even for journalists and especially for photographers who must get up close to their subjects to frame an image. Fashion is far less perilous, though photographers must also get intimate with their subjects. There are photographers who shoot both: battlefields and runways, guns and glamour.

By the 1850s, newspapers had started sending photographers to document wars. Today, photography has become an expected standard of the media’s coverage of conflict. Portraiture can add a personal, individualized connection between civilians and soldiers.

During his first visit to Libya in 2011, Mads Nissen photographed the people involved in the emerging civil war. Nissen returned to the hotspots of the civil war in 2012 to find demolished, abandoned buildings and homes. The silence, he said, was in ways scarier than the noise of war.