In Memoriam: Tim Hetherington

News Desk
Notes on Washington and the world by the staff of The New Yorker.

* « The Crisis in a Nutshell: A Year of BP and Oil
* Main

April 20, 2011

Posted by Whitney Johnson

The photographer Tim Hetherington was killed today in Misurata, Libya; three of his colleagues were also wounded, with Chris Hondros and Guy Martin in grave condition. Last year, on the Photo Booth blog, Whitney Johnson looked back on Hetherington’s career, republished below.

Tim Hetherington was one of the first documentary photographers with whom I actually sat down and had a conversation. I was fresh out of college, eager and naïve, and he was visiting from Liberia, where he was juggling his film and video cameras on the front lines of a devastating civil war. He spoke at length about the politics and history of the country, but also knew where to get the best chicken shawarma in Monrovia. Perhaps because of this, Hetherington’s images go beyond the chaos of conflict, capturing the human side of the situation: a young girl lingers at a wedding in the capital; two women, one with a baby strapped to her back, deliver rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition to a disarmament checkpoint. I assumed all photographers were this committed to the story.

Hetherington has walked the front lines of documentary practice as well, exploring the boundaries between still images and moving, photojournalism and conceptual work. He published “Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold” and spent the better part of 2007 in Afghanistan, documenting U.S. soldiers in the Korengal Valley; the resulting work earned both World Press Photo of the Year and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. And he’s returned to West Africa time and again, most recently to Guinea for this magazine. (Watch an audio slide show of that work.) “The media landscape is in flux, and so am I,” said Hetherington. “Who knows what the future holds.”
Slide 1 of 10
Previous
|
Next

* 100412_tim-01_p465.jpg“I was aware that my pictures were being used to illustrate others’ ideas, so I started making stories to express my own ideas about the world,” Hetherington said. In 2003, he travelled to Liberia, a country beset by a bloody civil war, and was the only photographer to live behind rebel lines. Here a Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) fighter cleans his AK-47 in preparation for a renewed attack on the capital, Monrovia.
* 100412_tim-02_p465.jpgThe young man in this photograph, taken before the LURD forces advanced on the capital, was shot where he holds his head three days later. “I have an ongoing dialogue with myself about the racial politics of representation and my work as the colonial camera, and I’m asking constantly whether I am part of the problem or part of the solution.”
* 100412_tim-03_p465.jpg“It’s easy to make images that reinforce negative stereotypes and stop people from engaging with the subject,” Hetherington said. This image, of two LURD lovers in Monrovia, challenges our assumptions about rebels in Liberia.
* 100412_tim-04_p465.jpgA young bridesmaid outside the Centennial Memorial Pavilion in Monrovia. In college, Hetherington photographed daily life, normal people. “I think this grounded my work, and gave me important human skills that are often overlooked in teaching today.”
* 100412_tim-05_p465.jpgWomen married to LURD fighters deliver rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition to a United Nations disarmament checkpoint in the rebel stronghold: “Using daily-life scenes gives us ways we can engage with difficult subject matter.”
* 100412_tim-06_p465.jpgInternally displaced persons flee from the fighting in Monrovia. “It’s hard to know what effect your work is having,” said Hetherington. “And it can be pretty demoralizing.”
* 100412_tim-07_p465.jpgHetherington was asked to work as an investigator for the U.N. Security Council’s Sanctions Committee: “It was an opportunity to use my knowledge for something more tangible. I wanted to see a stable Liberia that enjoyed accountability and justice—and if that’s what I was working for, then reporting directly to the U.N. seemed as valid as using documentary.”
* 100412_tim-08_p465.jpgHetherington’s photo of a soldier in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley went global after winning World Press Photo of the Year in 2007. “I had to deal with people responding to the image in every conceivable way, both positive and negative.”
* 100412_tim-09_p465.jpgThis sleeping soldier, Steve Kim, is also in Hetherington’s film “Restrepo”. “Still images have a creative dialogue with the viewer, but they depend on what the viewer brings to the image,” said Hetherington. “With film, I’m not giving you an artistic dialogue; I’m giving you information about something you haven’t experienced. I want to immerse you in that world.”
* 100412_tim-10_p465.jpg“Infidel,” a book about the soldiers in the Korengal Valley, will be published in the fall. “It’s going to be a very intimate portrayal of war—something we don’t often see in the mainstream press,” said Hetherington. “It will act as a commentary on representations of war, and on the act of war reporting.”

Photographs by Tim Hetherington/Panos

Sphere: Related Content