Thomas Dworzak was born in Bad Kötzting, Germany, and grew up in the small town of Cham in the Bavarian Forest. Towards the end of his high school studies, he began to travel and photograph in Europe and the Middle East, living in Avila, Prague, and Moscow, and studying Spanish, Czech, and Russian. After photographing the war in former Yugoslavia, he lived in Tbilissi, Georgia, from 1993 until 1998. During this period, he documented the conflicts in Chechnya, Karabakh, and Abkhazia and also continued his work on a larger-scale project about the Caucasus region and its people.   

Based in Paris from 1999 on, he covered the Kosovo crisis, mostly for US News & World Report, and returned to Chechnya the same year. After the fall of Grozny in early 2000, he began a project on the impact of the war in Chechnya on the neighboring North Caucasus and also photographed events in Israel, the war in Macedonia, and the refugee crisis in Pakistan.

After 9/11, he spent several months in Afghanistan on assignment for the New Yorker. He returned to Chechnya in 2002. Since then, he has photographed in Iraq, Iran, and Haiti, and has covered the revolutions in the former Soviet Republics of Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine.

Working mainly out of New York since 2004, he has been photographing the world of American politics and the impact of the war in Iraq. He is currently working on the projects M*A*S*H 2005, about Iraq, and Valiassr, an essay on Teheran’s main avenue.

Between 1995 and 1999, Dworzak’s work was distributed by Wostok Press. He became a Magnum nominee in 2000 and a member in 2004. He contributes to a wide range of publications, including The New Yorker, Newsweek, US News & World Report, Paris Match, The New York Times Magazine, and Time.