RIP. Tim Hertherinton

See link for this report and for the slide show(s).


http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/04/tim-hetherington.html


April 20, 2011
IN MEMORIAM: TIM HETHERINGTON
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.”