TIM HETHERINGTON and CHRIS HONDROS:THE PHOTOGRAHPERS Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, who have been killed at the ages of 40 and 41 respectively while covering the escalating violence in Misrata, Libya, were leading practitioners of their craft. Their work captured the horror of war and helped define western attitudes towards the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Hetherington’s eye and ability for capturing on film some of the most disturbing events of the past decade was as relentless as it was unsurpassed. With a great sense of self-deprecation and humanity, Hetherington was driven repeatedly to explore the ragged, violent margins of society to bring back portraits of people profoundly affected by conflict.
Hondros – who was born in New York city of Greek and German second World War refugee parents but grew up in North Carolina – will be remembered most for an outstanding series of images capturing what happened in Iraq in January 2005 when troops at a US checkpoint in Tal Afar opened fire on a car, containing two parents and five children, that failed to stop.
Both adults and one child died and the resultant images from Hondros, including one of a blood spattered and traumatised child crouching on the ground screaming in horror prompted worldwide acclaim and criticism.
Already nominated for a Pulitzer for other work, the Iraq images garnered Hondros the 2006 Robert Capa Gold Medal, war photography’s highest honour, awarded by the Overseas Press Club in New York for his “exceptional courage and enterprise” in Iraq.
Speaking about the incident, Hondros told the Colombia Journalism Review: "Almost every soldier in Iraq has been involved in some sort of incident like that or another, I would say. Their attitude about it was grim, but it wasn't the end of their world. It was, 'well, kind of wished they'd stopped. We fired warning shots. Damn, I don't know why the hell they didn't stop. What're you doing later, you want to play Nintendo? Okay.' Just a day's work for them. That stuff happens in Iraq a lot."
Hondros worked in most of the world's major conflict zones since the late 1990s, including Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the West Bank, Iraq and Liberia. His work appeared as the cover for magazines such as Newsweek, the Economistand on the front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.
For Hetherington, who was born in Liverpool into what he described as a “normal workingclass family”, the purpose of working in war was never an end in itself but was to understand better the lives of the civilians and soldiers caught up in it. A humanitarian, he worked not only for news organisations and magazines, but for human rights organisations and undertook extensive projects for the US-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch.
In Misrata he wanted to record the plight of civilians. He and Hondros died with them: an explosion on the town’s mortally dangerous Tripoli highway – the frontline in the battle between Gadafy loyalists and rebels – killed both journalists. At least eight other civilians were killed in fighting that day, a fact Hetherington would have been at pains to ensure was not forgotten.
Careful not to be pigeonholed as a photographer or a film-maker, Hetherington worked across different visual media. His interest lay in creating diverse forms of visual communication and his work ranged from multiscreen installations, to fly-poster exhibitions, to hand-held-device downloads. Known for his documentary work, he lived and worked in west Africa for eight years reporting on social and political issues worldwide.
As a film-maker, he worked as a cameraman, director and producer. Liberia: An Uncivil War(2004), the first documentary he worked on – as an assistant producer and cameraman – was also his first experience of filming warfare.
Surviving repeated firefights and close-quarter combat, Hetherington captured iconic images of Liberian rebels fighting to overthrow then-president Charles Taylor.
He was an assistant producer and cameraman on the BBC's Violent Coastseries (2004), about west Africa, cameraman on The Devil Came On Horseback(2007), about attacks across the border with Chad by Sudanese militia, and a producer/director on Channel 4's Unreported World – Nigeria: Fire in the Delta(2006). He made his debut as director of a documentary feature with Restrepo (2010) – a cinematic release made with fellow director Sebastian Junger about a platoon of forward-deployed US soldiers over the course of a year in Afghanistan's isolated Korengal Valley.
At times almost constantly in combat zones, and deeply affected by his time in Afghanistan, Hetherington said of his experience there: “When I’m filming, I’m very focused . . . You don’t really have time to start examining your emotions when you’re in the middle of this kind of situation. You kind of push them to a deeper place in your mind and examine them later. But war is traumatic. I’ve seen a lot of traumatic things happen in the Korengal Valley when we were there . . . I was with people who got killed and that was a very sad and upsetting thing to go through.”
Awarded the Rory Peck award for features (2008) and the grand jury prize at the 2010 Sundance film festival, Restrepowas subsequently nominated for an Academy award.
Of his desire to become a photographer, Hetherington wrote: “I had the epiphany when I came back [from travelling in Tibet and India] and realised I wanted to make images. I then worked for three to four years, going to night school in photography before eventually going back to college.”
After studying photojournalism in Cardiff, he got a job as a staff photographer with the Big Issue, the magazine produced for sale by London's homeless. Its Snapshot page showcased street-based photography. From the Big Issuehe moved to the Independentas a regular freelance photographer.
Soon a member of the Network photographic agency, he joined a small, dedicated, group of photojournalists often reporting on the world's trouble spots. Awards followed – including World Press Photo of the Year 2007 for his portrait of an exhausted US soldier in Afghanistan while working on assignment for Vanity Fair.
Hetherington was born a Roman Catholic but developed a Buddhist affinity, He moved recently to Brooklyn, New York, where he is survived by his partner, film-maker Idil Ibrahim. He is survived also by his siblings, Guy and Victoria and his parents, Alistair and Judith.
Hondros, whose interests outside photography included classical music and chess, is survived by his fiancee, Christina Piaia, whom he was to marry in August, and by his mother.
Timothy Alistair Hetherington:born December 5th, 1970; died April 20th, 2011;
Chris Hondros:born March 14th, 1970; died April 20th, 2011