Tim Hetherington, 1970–2011

The photographer who captured war’s terror

During combat “you don’t really have time to start examining your emotions,” Tim Hetherington said. But he couldn’t always maintain his detachment. Once, while he was covering the civil war in Liberia, a rebel commander threatened to shoot a doctor he suspected of espionage. After pleading for the man’s life, Hetherington grabbed the pistol from the commander’s grasp. The doctor survived.

Hetherington and his friend and fellow photographer Chris Hondros were killed last week by an exploding mortar shell in the Libyan town of Misurata, the scene of heavy fighting in recent weeks, said the London Telegraph. An accomplished photojournalist, he had covered fighting in Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan, among other places. He and his co-director, writer Sebastian Junger, were nominated for an Oscar this year for Restrepo, a documentary chronicling the lives of an isolated platoon of American soldiers in Afghanistan’s deadly Korengal Valley. His work—including still photographs, film, and multimedia presentations—charted “not only the terror of war but also the silent suffering of its pathetic by-products—victims of landmine injuries and blind children.”

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