He became a regular freelancer for the New York Times in 1996. In 2000, Mr. Silva co-authored The Bang-Bang Club, a factual account of press photographers who covered the end of the apartheid era in South Africa and in 2005, published In The Company of God, a photographic book on the Iraqi Shi'a during the occupation of Iraq. Mr. Silva has worked in Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia, Russia, and the Middle East.