"Be honest" implores conflict photographer Zohra Bensemra

Zohra started taking pictures as a child in Algeria, inspired by her older brother, who was a keen amateur photographer. Aged 20, her career began with a three-month stint as a photography assistant in Algiers' Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, working on the image library of all the museum's objects.

In 1992, she started working at the now defunct weekly newspaper, The Observateur, then "started working seriously as a photojournalist" at the Al Watan newspaper in the city, where her enthusiasm for the job was rewarded with increasingly bigger stories. This was a turbulent time in the country's history, a time of brutal civil war as Islamic Salvation Front guerrillas and government forces clashed – bombings and massacres were a common occurrence. Zohra was 24 when she photographed the aftermath of a local suicide bomb for the first time.

"I know the feeling of local people. I know what they're facing. I know what the war is doing to them. I feel like I'm in my own country – it's strange," says Zohra. It left her with a profound empathy for those caught up in violence, which makes leaving at the end of an assignment particularly difficult. "Sometimes I feel shame," she explains. "I don't want to show them that I'm happy to go home when they've just lost their relatives in a car bomb, or airstrikes. I want them to feel like I'm one of them. I don't have anything for them except taking pictures to show the world what they're facing."

For Zohra, the big issue facing photojournalism today is the public's faith – or lack of it – in the profession, fuelled by what she sees as an abuse of digital photography's potential. "We need to work harder, because today people don't trust us that much. We've had a lot of scandals recently, during which photographers have manipulated their pictures, their stories," she says.

Social media hasn't helped, she adds, with news outlets so eager to publish an image as quickly as they can, they sometimes use pictures that are several years old, or that depict a different event entirely. "I'm sad, because I'm not changing the situation. I'm not optimistic about our business, but like most photographers, I'm trying my best to do my work in the right way." With this in mind, what advice would she offer someone entering the industry? "It's not easy, but my advice is to be honest. If you're not honest, you can't do it. If the moment makes me cry, I want the picture to make you cry also," she says.

"Being a photographer is about how you see things, how you feel things, how you understand the culture of the area where you are. Talk to people before you start shooting pictures. Understand them. Listen to what they're saying. Respect your subject. Take your time. Feel people. When you do all of this, you can tell their story."