Seamus Conlan CEO & Co-Founder , Objective Cinema

In 2001 Seamus created what quickly became the 4th largest photo agency in the world, WpN , an international agency with over 5,000 media clients and with 700 photographers in 72 countries. He built the agency into a successful brand before leaving in 2006 to form ‘Farrell Conlan Media’ to house a variety of media products he has developed over the years with Tara Farrell. Seamus is currently CEO and co-founder of Objective Cinema an online film distribution company with a focus on documentaries and independent films. 

Seamus was named the 16th of the “100 most important people in photography” in American Photo magazine and Life Magazine honored  him for having taken one of the ‘100 images that changed the world’ after he initiated a photo tracing campaign in Rwanda during the genocide to reunite 21,000 lost children.

Seamus has over 17 years of international photojournalistic and television experience. He covered the war in Iraq and set up a news bureau for PEOPLE magazine ,Time Inc. months before and then during the US led invasion. His coverage as a unilateral in Baghdad during the US bombing campaign and the fall of Baghdad was later used along with his diaries in the book ‘Witness Iraq’.

His coverage of news stories and documentaries has been vast: he crossed the front line with the mujahideen for the fall of Kabul when the US assisted the over throw of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In Gaza he covered a dangerous story about female suicide bombers. During the NATO invasion of Kosovo he did however end up kidnapped for a short period on his way through Albania for GQ magazine. Every country has a different story and Seamus has covered a lot of them including Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Serbia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Burundi, India, Kashmir, Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Zimbabwe for magazines such as LIFE, National Geographic, People Magazine, Newsweek, TIME, Stern and Paris Match. Seamus has also worked for TV news organizations such as CNN, the BBC, APTV, NHK, Canal Plus, ITV, Channel 4 Television to name a few.

He judges many international photographic awards and recently curated the 25th anniversary exhibit for the ‘International Center for Journalists’.