Early life

Molly Bingham grew up in Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

, Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

 and went to Brooks school in North Andover, MA, before getting her BA in 1990 at Harvard College

Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

 in Medieval European History. In 1993 she traveled to Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 and Tibet

Tibet

Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

 and produced a portfolio from those trips that she showed to magazine and newspaper photo editors.

Carrer as a photojournalist

In 1994 she traveled to Rwanda

Rwanda

Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...

 to cover ongoing events after the genocide

Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...

. From that time until 1998, Bingham focused her work on central Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, including Rwanda, Burundi

Burundi

Burundi , officially the Republic of Burundi , is a landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its capital is Bujumbura...

 and the Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

 (then called Zaire). In addition to working as a journalist, Bingham has worked on three projects with Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...

 over the years, one in Burundi, one on small arms trafficking in the Great Lakes region of central Africa and later a short emergency project in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...

.

In August 1998 Bingham began work as Official Photographer to the Vice President at the White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

, a job documenting the life of the Vice President that she continued until January 2001.

Bingham returned to Africa in the spring of 2001, working on a story for the New York Times Sunday Magazine on the mining of the mineral coltan

Coltan

Coltan is the industrial name for columbite–tantalite, a dull black metallic mineral from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. The niobium-dominant mineral is columbite, hence the "col" half of the term...

 that is used to coat computer chips. On September 11th, 2001, Bingham was in western Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

 on a training course for journalists, but returned to Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 to photograph the Pentagon

Pentagon

In geometry, a pentagon is any five-sided polygon. A pentagon may be simple or self-intersecting. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagram is an example of a self-intersecting pentagon.- Regular pentagons :In a regular pentagon, all sides are equal in length and...

 and the feeling in the capital in the wake of the attacks for the New Yorker. Post 9/11 Bingham has spent time in Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

, the Gaza Strip

Gaza Strip

thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...

, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 and fourteen months in Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

.

During the 2004-05 academic year Bingham won a mid-career Nieman Fellowship

Nieman Fellowship

The Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This award allows winners time to reflect on their careers and focus on honing their skills....

 at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. Bingham has won several awards including Pictures of the Year

Pictures of the Year

is the oldest and most prestigious photojournalism program in the world. POYi began as an annual competition for photojournalism in 1944, and is now an international professional development program for visual journalism. POYi is a non-profit, academic program dedicated to journalism education...

 awards for her photography and an honorable mention from the Overseas Press Club

Overseas Press Club

The Overseas Press Club of America was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member...

 for her story, “Ordinary Warriors: The Iraqi Resistance” that ran in the July 2004 issue of Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair (magazine)

Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...

. Bingham has given numerous talks at Universities, on television and radio and is additionally one of five women journalists featured in the documentary Bearing Witness screened on A&E

A&E Network

The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...

 in May 2005.

Filmmaking

Bingham co-directed and produced the documentary film Meeting Resistance

Meeting Resistance

Meeting Resistance is a 2007 documentary film about the Iraq War. The film presents the views of eleven Iraqi resistance fighters in the Adhamiyah neighborhood of Baghdad. The film was directed by journalists Molly Bingham and Steve Connors ....

with partner and journalist Steve Connors. The film was reported over ten months in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004, and features interviews with Iraqis (and one Syrian) directly involved in the violent resistance to the occupation of the country. Meeting Resistance opened in theatres in the U.S. in the fall of 2007 and was released on DVD the following year. The film has subsequently been invited to screen around the world at universities, community groups and film festivals, as well as for US military audiences—including Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

 where the directors were brought to how the film to military and diplomatic audiences.

The film won the “Golden Prize” at the Al Jazeera Film Festival among others and Bingham and Connors traveled extensively for sixteen months in support of the film and talking about their understanding of and experience in Iraq and how that knowledge translated into current events.

Recent work

Bingham has expanded her work from photography to include writing and filmmaking. Her written work has been published in Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair (magazine)

Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...

, The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, Nieman Reports and other online and print publications. After her Nieman Fellowship Bingham began considering the changes necessary within the structure of journalism to bring it into the current age. In 2009 she set up a site called “Transforming the Media” as a way to articulate her thinking on the media and interact with others on media issues.

Bingham is on the board of the Center for Public Integrity

Center for Public Integrity

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around...

, and on the advisory board of This I Believe, a public dialogue about belief - one essay at a time.

External links

• "http://www.meetmollybingham.com" Official website
• Meeting Resistance Official website for Meeting Resistance

Video

• Interview with Bingham and Connors, from Democracy Now! program, October 18, 2007
• Op-Ed: Know Thine Enemy, published on the New York Times website on October 16, 2007