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John D McHugh is an Irish photojournalist and filmmaker, based in London, UK. Originally a daily press photographer, McHugh worked as a regular stringer for The Associated Press and The Guardian, was a staff photographer position with Agence-France Presse, before gradually moving into filmmaking.

McHugh has worked extensively in Afghanistan since the start of 2006. He has been embedded with US, Canadian, Danish and British troops, and has worked in most of the Afghan provinces along the eastern and southern border with Pakistan.

In 2007, McHugh embarked on a nine month embed with US troops in Afghanistan. Just five weeks into his trip, the unit he was with was caught in an ambush in Nuristan. 18 soldiers were killed and 11 wounded. McHugh was also wounded, shot through the chest.

During his recovery McHugh began experimenting with combining audio and video with his photography. He also began writing about his experiences.

Since then he has moved from producing a year long multimedia project in Afghanistan for The Guardian, which included photography, audio slideshows, short documentary films, and blogs, to making half-hour films for the People and Power strand on Al Jazeera English, as well as continuing to produce photojournalism and multimedia for magazines and newspapers.