On 17 December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself in Sidi Bouzid, south of Tunis. His action sparked a peaceful revolution that eventually brought down the Tunisian dictatorship; just two months later, Egypt's ruler has also been toppled, raising hopes that democracy will sweep across the Middle East and parts of Africa.

It took protestors just 28 days to oust President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, catching politicians and photographers off-guard. "Everything happened so quickly," says Magnum photographer Dominic Nahr, who was in South Sudan documenting the birth of a new country after a national referendum. But when protests erupted in Egypt on 25 January, he, and many of his colleagues, didn't hesitate to pack their bags.

Guy Martin, a 27-year-old English photographer who has worked extensively in the Middle East, boarded a plane on 27 January without any assignment. "It fitted with my own agenda," he tells BJP from Cairo. "These people are my own age, I felt like it was a generational thing that I had to cover." Ivor Prickett, a former winner of the BJP/Nikon Endframe Award, did the same. "I was in Beirut, where I'm based, watching the events on television, and I felt a compelling urge to go there. It was the first time a big news event had cropped up in my part of the world. I guess I was also inspired by the fact that it was a younger generation leading these protests. I thought I would be an idiot if I didn't go."

Kate Brooks, a freelance photojournalist, also felt compelled to cover the protests. She was on assignment in Afghanistan when she made the decision to go, and says that: "Something deep inside me told me to move, to go, to be there, to witness and photograph. I hadn't heard that voice or felt so compelled in a long, long time."

Jacopo Quaranta also went without an assignment, determined to "witness history through my own lens"; his images went on to appear in Time Magazine. Chris Hondros of Getty Images and Goran Tomasevic of Reuters were there, and Ed Ou, Andrew Burton, Benedicte Kurzen and Ron Haviv of VII Photo. Magnum's Peter van Agtmael and Paolo Pellegrin were also there, joined by Yuri Kozyrev of Noor. The list goes on - in fact, says Brooks, "two thirds of the journalists I know on earth were in the same one-mile radius as I was, so there was also a wonderful reunion of friends in the midst of a revolution".

Dangerous work
The protests started peacefully, the organisers drawing on the ideas of Gene Sharp, an American political thinker, who argued that "non-violence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability", according to The New York Times.

On his first day in Cairo, Nahr met with a couple of photographers to decide how to cover the action. "Everyone wanted to go to the biggest Mosque, but a local friend of mine said go to Giza [a district of Cairo, 45 minutes south of Tahrir Square by foot]. I ended up trusting my gut." There weren't a lot of photographers there, he says, and what he saw was "pretty amazing". From there, he followed the crowd all the way to Tahrir Square "pushing through all the police lines. It was very emotional. I had goose bumps down my back".

Prickett didn't have a clear idea of what he was going to cover either, and was working on his own. "I had hardly any contacts on the ground and, with the phones down, it was almost impossible to call anyone," he says. "I just looked for protesters and stayed with them."

Brooks was more lucky, she saw a familiar face at the baggage claim upon arriving in Cairo. "A friend and I shared a taxi into the city a few hours later as soon as the curfew lifted," she says. "Being with someone made going through the dozens of military checkpoints and non-official checkpoints manned by armed men less menacing. On the way, I joked that our taxi driver's Fred Flintstone car had been running longer than Mubarak had been in power--- the little things that lightened the mood and tension were important."

Already the situation was tense. "Upon arriving at the Hilton, an officer at a military checkpoint asked if I had a camera," says Brooks. "I confessed I did and he responded by saying he would break it if he saw it."

Eventually, photographers started to meet up, sharing tips on the best spots. At times, they would go out in a group, but, as van Agtmael explains, "we'd quickly become separated in the crowd". "We stayed in touch via cellphone," he adds. "The situation was so vast that there was no real focus to my images. Mostly I tried to isolate moments that showed the emotion and grand scale of the event."

At first the protestors, who seemed keen to have their story told, welcomed the photographers. But the atmosphere changed completely after President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down on 01 February. "That's when things got dangerous," says Prickett. On Wednesday 02 February, in Tahrir Square, pro-Mubarak supporters faced off anti-governmental protesters in a 14-hour battle where rocks became weapons. Caught in the middle were journalists and photographers.

"When the clashes began, I was in the crowd," says Quaranta. "I started taking pictures without looking through the viewfinder, hoping I would catch something interesting. I saw stones flying everywhere, and since I had never been in a situation like this one, I searched for the most secure place I could find. I ran towards a tank to take cover, and that's when I saw another photographer, who was already there. He was totally calm, he had experience; it was Yuri Kozyrev. For him that moment seemed totally normal. He was in control, when I had lost control of my camera." Quaranta admits that at the end of that day, he didn't have any useable shots.

Reuters' chief photographer Goran Tomasevic had come prepared. "I had brought a gas mask and helmet. Some of my colleagues made fun of me, taking pictures of me, but I was able to stay out [and get close to the action] while others couldn't," he tells BJP.

Pro-Mubarak supporters march towards anti-government supporters in Tahrir Square in Cairo February 2, 2011. Image © REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

Before venturing out, Brooks generally do a basic risk assessment, she tells BJP. "I base my decisions on my intuition and when I am not on assignment I am definitely more adverse to risk." That day, she had stopped for lunch when the clashes broke out. "Just as I was heading out, a few friends and colleagues were coming into the hotel with injuries, so I checked out the scene from my room. Crowds were moving like waves, rocks were landing in every direction and gunfire was ringing out. I couldn't see how to get through that crowd to the protesters."

She adds: "Covering Tahrir Square was all about finding your way in and out without being hurt or having your equipment lifted. Later in the week, I would just stay in the Square for days to avoid running the risk of being caught on the outside."

"A photographer's sixth sense will enable him to walk away before the crowd actually turns; before it becomes too dangerous," says Hugh Pinney, a senior director of photography at Getty Images. "It's something you can't define. It comes with experience. I don't think you can necessarily teach it. I think it's the mark of a true professional. I think it comes with an understanding of how dangerous that situation is; that nothing can be taken lightly."

But even for the most qualified photographer, things don't always go to plan, as van Agtmael can attest. The Magnum photographer is used to the battlefield, having covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2006, but even so he found himself in trouble. "The first days in Cairo were quite calm," he emails BJP. "I covered a series of peaceful rallies without aggression. There was a lot of excitement and expectation. But everything went south on Wednesday."

That morning, van Agtmael was covering a pro-Mubarak rally when, alongside fellow photographer Andrew Henderson, he was surrounded and attacked by yelling Mubarak supporters. He could only curl into a ball to try to protect himself, until "some people forced their way through and surrounded me, picking me up and shielding me from most of the blows of the other Mubarak supporters. They carried me to the army a few hundred feet away who put me in a compound. As I lay on the ground dazed and bloodied I could hear them yelling and pounding their bodies against the metal door. A few moments later, some other soldiers brought in Andrew. After having our wounds cleaned, we were escorted by the Army back to the hotel". Van Agtmael lost all of his images that day, but says it was "a small price to pay".

Over the next few days photographers found it increasingly difficult to cover the protests and the Committee to Protect Journalists documented more than 141 direct attacks on journalists and news facilities [as of 10 February]. "I.E.D.s, suicide bombers and Israeli airstrikes aside, I would say that the work conditions over that week were a combination of the most difficults I've encountered over the past decade in the region," admits Brooks, who is now back in Afghanistan.

Pinney agrees. "One thing I'm always concerned about is dealing with mobs," he says. "The lines are not clear. When a mob turns on you, normal rules don't apply anymore. Here, you had two mobs of people throwing rocks at each other. Something had changed at that point and it became one of the most dangerous situations for a photographer to be in."

"You do what you can," says Santiago Lyon, the Associated Press' director of photography. "You do your best." "You have to follow your instinct and your guts," adds Nahr.

As Mubarak held on, some photographers started having doubts about the revolution's outcome. "We thought when the violence kind of happened, that maybe that wasn't the one," says Martin. "We thought that maybe the protests would die down, and we thought about going home." But, from 09 February, the crowds just kept on becoming bigger and bigger, he adds. "The crowds told us this was going to happen - there were Christians and Muslims, young and old, women and children."

Flags were everywhere, adds Nahr. "People who used to sell peanuts, are now selling flags. The pride for Egypt has been awoken again, people around us were proud of being Egyptians again."

New Territory
Eventually, Mubarak gave up. The situation has cooled, with the country returning to normalcy. Photographers are pulling out, with Getty Images reducing its staff there from three to one and independent photographers moving on to the next story.

"It's been amazing to see all the messages of support I received while working for Time," says Nahr. "It makes you feel the power of your position and the responsibility you have to represent, as best as you can, what you see in front of you. It's been an honour. It's something you dream about. To be able to act on that is amazing."

Nahr is now working on a personal project "to explain what went on outside of Tahrir;" to portray that Egyptian pride in bringing down an authoritarian president. Prickett, on the other hand, has his 6x6 film images - images he shot predominantly for himself, documenting the democratic movement from his point of view with his specific style. These images will, hopefully, he says, form part of a greater project. "I think it will go nicely with the 35mm digital images I took when on assignment for Panos Pictures. I might combine the two. But I'll only know once the films have been developed."

But for these photographers - this younger generation - this might be just the beginning.

"The photographers that inspired us are the guys who went to cover the Balkans, Chechnya and Kosovo in the nineties," says Martin. "We've all got their books and we've all written theses about them. In the 1990s, these photographers all said the same thing: that this period was such a defining moment - the fall of communism, the breaking of Eastern Europe. They were young, they had resources and support to cover these stories and they did a great job. And now, it kind of feels the same - to be here and to do this, it feels, not that we're in the right place at the right time, but that this Facebook thing, this Twitter thing, these revolutionary, technology-driven kind of shifts, is a story for us. For a generation that kind of grew up on Facebook, it feels like a natural fit."

These young photographers are now watching how the situation will evolve, and whether it will spread to other countries such as Algeria, Yemen or Jordan. If it does, "we'd all go, without question", says Martin. "I feel a connection to this story," adds Prickett. "Because it was led by the youth. It made it more accessible and easier for me to understand - not that I understand everything that's happening, of course. So, maybe if this spreads to other countries, then we'll keep following it."

And with elections in Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and the West Bank, a new country emerging in South Soudan, and rising protests in Algeria, "it feels like it's all interconnected", says Nahr. "It would be a shame not to cover it all; to cover this massive shift we're witnessing."

A version of this article will appear in the next issue of British Journal of Photography, out on 02 March 2011.