Nichole Sobecki, born 1986, is an award-winning photographer and filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya. From 2012-2015 Nichole led Agence France-Presse’s East Africa video bureau, and was a Rory Peck Awards News Finalist for her coverage of the Westgate mall attacks in Kenya. In 2018 won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights prize in new media. She has been recognized by Pictures of the Year, the One World Media Awards, the Alexandra Boulat Award for Photojournalism, The Magenta Foundation, and The Jacob Burns Film Center, among others. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Foreign Policy, The Financial Times Magazine, The Guardian, and Le Monde.

Through documentary photography, Nichole Sobecki brings attention to humanity’s fraught, intimate, and ultimately unbreakable connection to the natural world. Born in New York, she has lived in Nairobi for the past decade. In 2016, Sobecki began her project “Where our Land Was,” which investigates the human consequences of significant environmental change in Somalia. She is currently exploring the vital role the Congo Basin plays in the ecological balance of our planet, as a National Geographic Explorer. Sobecki’s photography has been recognized by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights prize, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, Pictures of the Year, the One World Media Awards, and the Alexandra Boulat Award for Photojournalism, among others. She is represented internationally by the photo agency VII, and is a member of Women Photograph and Everyday Africa.