I know next to nothing about photography. Other than an ill-fated attempt at “serious” photography my senior year of high school, I’ve never ventured far from disposable cameras, and I’d rather prefer to keep it that way.

I was skeptical when a friend suggested that I read “Shutterbabe,” Deborah Copaken Kogan’s account of her photojournalist past — there was no way I would willingly read a book about photography, I said.

I quickly learned that “Shutterbabe” goes far deeper than I had originally thought, making it one of the best modern memoirs since Dave Eggers’ “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” and Alice Sebold’s “Lucky.”

Kogan’s tale begins in war-torn Afghanistan in 1988, far before the Taliban invaded the country. She is traveling with Afghani freedom fighters, so she can take first-hand photos in a desperate attempt to pay the rent on her Paris apartment.

In Afghanistan, she experiences the death of feminism as she knows it, and the hatred that her guides feel toward America (“Down with America!” echoes through the campground, a phrase that haunts her 13 years later in the aftermath of 9/11). This first section of the book also sets up the pattern for her often tumultuous relationships with men, as she is abandoned and used by a sleazy fellow photojournalist.

After her assignment in Afghanistan, Kogan moved on to Switzerland, where a clean-needle drive turned into a drug addict’s paradise in a matter of hours. In Switzerland, Kogan first confronted the moral issues that accompany her profession. She takes photos of others’ suffering, and in the two chapters that follow, she is forced to stage photos so she can pay off her debts and still manage to eat, erratically at best. She is forced to reexamine what she has become as a photographer, as a person, when she takes photos of starved, dying children in a Romanian orphanage.

Here, Kogan reaches a turning point when she falls in love with her future husband, Paul. Never one for marriage or family, at least not in her early 20s, she never thought anything of running off to dangerous situations for the purpose of her career.

When she moves to Moscow with Paul, she has every intention of staying out of war-torn lands. Right as she’s having her revelation, an anti-Communist movement changes everything in the USSR. This only cements her resolve to stay away from war, and when she and Paul eventually start their own family, she realizes that, perhaps, family and parenthood are really most important, despite her interests in feminism and career.

“Shutterbabe” works because it offers a fresh look at war, feminism and the importance of family. Kogan is true to herself and refuses to sugarcoat the horrors she’s experienced. She is unrelenting in her pursuit of truth and beauty in the face of hardship, and recognizes the effect of love, children and changing ideals on career and the seemingly unchanging definitions of “feminism.”

What’s more, in a new Afterword, Kogan attempts to put into words the tragedy of 9/11 in a fresh, honest way that no other writer seems to be able to, even throwing in Jerry Falwell-Osama bin Laden comparisons for good measure. After “Shutterbabe,” the topics of photography, career and feminism don’t seem nearly as boring anymore.