In 17 years as a photojournalist, Conlan has covered stories in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. During the Rwandan war in 1994, he brought together the resources of several international aid agencies, as well as Eastman Kodak and Life magazine, to help reunite more than 20,000 lost children with their parents using photographic images. Conlan received a Directors Club award for his compilation photograph of the children, and the process he developed is now a standard form of tracing people in developing nations.