PHOTOAUTOMAT

Tim Hetherington. (5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011).

British-American photojournalist, filmmaker. 

If you've been following this past two week's Photoautomat you've probably already have a clear idea of Tim Hetherington's stand of war photography; about his urge to look further and add humanity and that day-to-day feeling to conflict. Maybe becuase that is exactly what conflict take away from us... it takes away our humanity and it takes away the sense, the possibility of doing anything aside from being in conflict.

Third Part.

Inner Light: Portraits of the Blind, Sierra Leone 1999- 2003

The civil war in Sierra Leone left many people with serious medical conditions. In 2004, Hetherington wrote that in addition to amputations, “the fighters of the Revolutionary Front (RUF) also terrorized people by cutting their eyes out. Others lost their eyes to shrapnel or as a result of being caught up in combat. Many simply lost their eyesight because they did not have access to a doctor and therefore a simple medical condition developed and went untreated.”

Born in 1970 in Liverpool, Tim Hetherington graduated from Oxford University and later studied at Cardiff University. A contributing photographer at Vanity Fair, Tim received numerous awards including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (2000 – 2004), a Hasselblad Foundation Grant (2002), the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year, the Rory Peck Award for Features (2008), an Alfred I. DuPont Columbia Award (2009), as well as an Academy Award nomination and the Leadership in Entertainment Award by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for the film Restrepo(2011). Hetherington’s photographs are held in several museum collections, including Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO. After his death, the largest town square in Ajdabiya, Libya was renamed Tim Hetherington Square by anti-Qaddafi rebels.

Hetherington and fellow photographer Chris Hondros were killed while covering the conflict in Misrata, Libya on April 20, 2011.

This is the lik to his Trust: http://www.timhetheringtontrust.org/

An interesting arcticle in American Photo Magazine. Another one in The Guardian.

Trailer for documentary: "Which way is the front line from here?"

Trailer for "Restrepo".

Have a look at the previous posts on Hetherington here: Part I and Part II

-

The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.  

 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

Buno, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan,2008.

Tim Hetherington. (5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011).

British-American photojournalist, filmmaker. 

Second Part.

When shooting the war documentary Restrepo with Sebastian Junger in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. He created a series of photographs of man bonding and the sleeping soldiers. Most of these intimate photographs depict American soldiers in , while others capture images from the Liberian civil war. As Junger puts it, “the artistic choices he made were incredibly risky, but he was very sure of himself and wound up completely re-inventing his craft. The title of my film, Which Way Is the Front Line from Here?, refers as much to Tim’s artistic instincts as to any combat situation he may have been in.” (Read full article here).

"...the war machine is too put a group of man together in extreme circumstances, and get them to bond together and they will kill and be killed for each other"

"at the end of the day you realize that it was just a group of young men that were pout in this mountain and they are trying to do is survive just looking after for each (...), and that was it really, nothing to do with war, nothing to do with politics."

-What are you doing?

-Don't you get it?

-(...)this is what the american publics never gets to see, (...) we want to see the soldiers as strong, we don't wanna know that they are also this vulnerable boys."

Murphy, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2008.

Kelso, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2008.

The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo. 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

Tim Hetherington

Other side of war photography

Libya, April 9, 2011. (Self-portrait by Tim Hetherington. - ©TIM HETHERINGTON / MAGNUM)

Tim Hetherington (5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011).

British-American photojournalist, filmmaker. 

"Hetherington was known primarily for his coverage of conflicts in West Africa and the Middle East, employing photography, writing, and film to bring awareness to the human side of war and the suffering it invokes. His work was humanistic, foregoing any attempt at a holistic view of conflict. Instead, Hetherington worked to portray the lives of soldiers and civilians who were caught in the unfolding drama of political and social unrest." By Lindsay Comstock on April 12, 2012 for American Photo Mag. 

We are used to see very graphic images when we think of war photography, that somewhat dehumanizes people and make them fit into stereotypes of the good and the evil, and fulfill the characters everyone expect to see: the victims, the assassins, the corpses, the blood, the misery. What separated Tim Hetherington from this, was the urge to look further; to look deep into the life these people lived while surviving conflicts, find their humanity, show their routines. He looked for camaraderie in soldiers, for the human side of warrior children, the consequences of war in the series and how they overcame it.

This month will be dedicated to Tim Hetherington and in this first post I share with you one of the things that I consider helped him convey his message, his search: the used of medium format.

Photos taken in Liberia, 2003-2004. Via YOSSI MILO GALLERY, NEW YORK.

-

The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.