David Guttenfelder was born in Iowa and graduated from the University of Iowa with a Bachelor of Arts in cultural anthropology. He has worked for the AP since 1994 based in Kenya, the Ivory Coast, India and Japan. He is currently AP’s chief Asia photographer and his feature work has been used prominently in editorial publications throughout the world including Time and National Geographic. Photo: U.S. soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, fire mortars at known enemy firing positions from a base in the Pech River Valley in Afghanistan's Kunar province, Saturday, October 24, 2009. (Photo by David Guttenfelder/AP Photo)

Indigenous Q'eqchi girls practice taekwondo with their teacher, Danny Coy, on a dirt court in the middle of the village in Tipulcan village, San Pedro Carcha, Guatemala, on 25 November 2019 (issued 27 November 2019). Tipulcan village girls learn taekwondo to combat sexist violence and harassment they have suffered in their community in northern Guatemala. (Photo by Esteban Biba/EPA/EFE)

A vendor pushes an improvised cart with a woman and merchandise along a rarely used rail track in Bangkok, Thailand, Thursday, June 25, 2020. Daily life in the capital slowly returns to normal as the Thai government eases many restrictions imposed weeks ago to combat the spread of COVID-19. Though emergency regulations require the use of face masks in public, some residents have become apathetic as Thailand has record zero local transmission for over three weeks. (Photo by Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP Photo)

This photo taken on March 5, 2023 show fighters competing in a bout during a traditional Myanmar boxing Lethwei tournament at Pyi Thar Lin Aye pagoda in Hlaingbwe township in Karen state. The spectacle of almost-no-holds-barred traditional Myanmar boxing known as Lethwei, considered one of the most aggressive combat sports in the world – with fighters eschewing boxing gloves for thin gauze bandages wrapped around hardened knuckles – draws huge crowds in the eastern border state of Karen. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

Bolivian sеx workers sit during a Reuters interview before the countrywide, two-week mandatory quarantine to combat the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), decreed by Bolivia's interim government, in El Alto outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia on March 20, 2020. (Photo by Monica Machicao/Reuters)

Soldiers of Ukraine's National Guard 1st brigade Bureviy (Hurricane) fire a recoilless cannon during combat training at a military training ground in the north of Ukraine Friday, November 3, 2023. (Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)

Andrii Rubliuk, a senior sergeant with a Ukrainian intelligence unit who lost both arms and a leg in combat, holds a rifle during military training near Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 14, 2025. (Photo by Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo)

Iraqi Kurdish refugees wait with children in Cukurca refugee camp in Turkey April 8, 1991. Reuters photographers have chronicled Kurdish refugee crises over the years. In 1991 Srdjan Zivulovic documented refugees in Cukurca who had escaped a military operation by Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq aimed at “Arabising” Kurdish areas in the north. Hundreds of thousands fled into Turkey and Iran. Images shot in recent months show familiar scenes as crowds of people flee Islamic State militants in Syria. There are as many as 30 million Kurds, spread through Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, but tend to feel more loyalty to their Kurdishness, rather than their religion. (Photo by Srdjan Zivulovic/Reuters)