“ Junger’s film also seems to question whether Hetherington took his desire to be on the front line too far. According to the documentary, Hetherington, who was 40 when he died, was conflicted about his desire to settle down with his girlfriend, Idil...

Junger’s film also seems to question whether Hetherington took his desire to be on the front line too far. According to the documentary, Hetherington, who was 40 when he died, was conflicted about his desire to settle down with his girlfriend, Idil Ibrahim, and his quest to tell the story of war. In the documentary he even acknowledges that war photography can be a “very destructive thing to carry on beyond a certain age.”

The film ends with footage Hetherington shot in Misrata before he and Hondros were killed, including a visit inside a building were rebel soldiers were trying to smoke out enemy snipers by sending burning tires into rooms where they were barricaded.

The area felt unsafe to some journalists who had been with Hetherington and his group earlier that day, including photographer Andre Liohn, who questions in the film whether the group had put themselves in unnecessary danger.

“In the war you lose a lot of things (and) one of the things that you lose can be the original connection that took you there,” Liohn says. “I felt they were not paying the proper attention and the proper respect to everything that was happening around. They were trying to get in front of the rebels.”

Junger said he included Liohn’s comments because he still struggles with the question of whether Hetherington took too much of a risk that day.

“The decision to go out to the front line is inherently risky. It’s inherently understandable because front lines are compelling. And it’s inherently stupid. It’s all of them at the same time,” Junger said. “Everyone makes that decision, and most of the time it goes fine. And when it doesn’t go fine everyone goes, ‘What the hell were you thinking?’”

Junger added, “That said, I do wonder why after the intensity of fighting that Tim was part of in the morning, why he felt compelled to go out for a second dose, a second helping? That I don’t quite get. But had I been there, I think I would have been perfectly capable of doing the same thing. So I don’t want to be too judgmental about it. But I do wonder.”

I talked to Sebastian Junger about his Tim Hetherington documentary (via Yahoo News)

11 years ago

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“Indeed, that has been one of the most troubling parts of the deaths of Tim and Chris Hondros. Chris has somehow dropped from public view. He was a consummate professional and classical photojournalist; quietly, consistently and diligently covering all the major conflicts since the late 90′s in an even-handed style. Amidst his steady approach are two icons of war photography from Liberia and Iraq. He was also popular and highly respected by his peers. Yet his name is often mentioned as an afterthought, if at all. Paradoxically, it was this kind of elevation of the individual to the exclusion of the bigger ideas that Tim was trying to reject with his work.”

Peter van Agtmael in a piece for Lightbox about Chris Hondros, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s HBO documentary
11 years ago 2 notes
Chris Hondros was a Getty Images photographer who was killed in April 2011 while covering the war in Libya. Last month, I wrote about a Kickstarter his friend Greg Campbell had launched to raise funds for a film that would explore Chris’s life by...

Chris Hondros was a Getty Images photographer who was killed in April 2011 while covering the war in Libya. Last month, I wrote about a Kickstarter his friend Greg Campbell had launched to raise funds for a film that would explore Chris’s life by telling the stories behind some of his most famous photos, including the one above which has an amazing back story. The campaign is set to wrap up on Aug. 8, and Campbell is hoping to raise $100,000 to fund most of the film. You can read my story about the project here or donate here.

10 years ago 310 notes
Chris Hondros was a Getty Images photographer who was killed in April 2011 while on assignment in Libya. He was also a longtime resident of DUMBO Brooklyn, and several of his friends and Getty colleagues are submitting his name as part of an effort...

Chris Hondros was a Getty Images photographer who was killed in April 2011 while on assignment in Libya. He was also a longtime resident of DUMBO Brooklyn, and several of his friends and Getty colleagues are submitting his name as part of an effort to name a lawn at the Brooklyn Bridge Park in his memory. If you’d like to participate–and you should–send an email with his name to info@brooklynbridgepark.com by March 20.

11 years ago 2 notes

Chris Hondros was a Getty Images photographer who was killed in April 2011 while covering the war in Libya. His friend Greg Campbell launched a Kickstarter this week to raise funds for a film that would explore Chris’s life by telling the stories behind some of his most famous photos.

That includes the above shot of Joseph Duo, a Liberian soldier Hondros photographed during the country’s deadly civil war in July 2003. The two didn’t formally meet until two years later, and afterwards, Hondros paid for Duo to finish high school in hopes he would find a better life.

I wrote about that unlikely friendship and Campbell’s upcoming film for Yahoo News, a story that also includes a pretty great slideshow of Hondros’ photography.

10 years ago 10 notes
CNN’s photography blog has a beautiful post featuring photos from the late Chris Hondros, the Getty Images photographer who was killed almost one year ago while on assignment in Libya. He was posthumously named a Pulitzer finalist Tuesday for his war...

CNN’s photography blog has a beautiful post featuring photos from the late Chris Hondros, the Getty Images photographer who was killed almost one year ago while on assignment in Libya. He was posthumously named a Pulitzer finalist Tuesday for his war coverage, but CNN takes a different look at his images over the years, focusing on the children he featured in his photos. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

12 years ago 2 notes
“ It was one of the most searing images of the war in Iraq: a tiny girl, splattered in blood and screaming in horror after her parents had been shot and killed by American soldiers who fired on the family car when it failed to yield for a foot patrol...

It was one of the most searing images of the war in Iraq: a tiny girl, splattered in blood and screaming in horror after her parents had been shot and killed by American soldiers who fired on the family car when it failed to yield for a foot patrol in the northern town of Tel Afar.

Taken by Getty Images photographer Chris Hondros, who was embedded with the patrol, the January 2005 photo offered powerful visual testimony to the horrific impact of the conflict on Iraqi citizens. It came as the American public was beginning to question the rising death toll and purpose of a war that was starting to look unwinnable.

Hondros was inured to the chaos of war. By then, he was a veteran combat photographer who had served as a witness for the world on the frontlines of conflicts in far-away places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Liberia and Sierra Leone. But Hondros wasn’t merely fueled by the adrenaline of covering war. He was there to document the impact of conflict on people, both soldiers and civilians, to discover something deeper about humanity through war.

“He tried to make sense of what was happening around him, to really understand the chaos that he often found himself in,” recalled Sandy Ciric, a longtime photo editor at Getty Images who was one of Hondros’s closest friends and colleagues. “He was a professional, and he knew it was his job to document. But he was also human. He was really affected by the people he met and the things he saw… He was always thinking and writing and shooting and working, trying to understand the terrible complexity of war and the impact it had on people.”

So it was a horrible and painful twist of fate that a photographer so determined to show the world the human impact of conflict died trying to do just that. Hondros was killed in a mortar attack along with fellow photojournalist Tim Hetherington in April 2011 while covering the war in Libya.

He left behind an adoring mother, a fiance and a tight-knit group of friends and colleagues who were devastated by his death but also determined to preserve his memory and legacy as one of the most promising photojournalists of a generation who died too soon.

It’s that career that is the subject of “Testament,” a new book of Hondros’s work published by Powerhouse Books and Getty Images (which is donating its portion of the proceeds to The Chris Hondros Fund). The book, edited by Ciric and Pancho Bernasconi of Getty Images and Christina Piaia, Hondros’s fiance, features not only images that Hondros took over more than a decade of covering conflict, but also his own words, taken from stories and essays he wrote about his experiences on the road as he sought to understand what he was seeing through his lens.

I previewed the new Chris Hondros Book, which is out today (via Yahoo News)

10 years ago 554 notes

New Venture Envisions Films Based on Gritty Journalism

nytimes.com
An Oscar-winning screenwriter, a billionaire film financier and a well-known magazine editor have come together to form a movie and television company built on a journalism foundation.

Mark Boal, a former magazine reporter who wrote and produced “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” which earned him four Oscar nominations and two wins, has spoken for years about a desire to systemize what he calls “front-page art” — movies and TV shows based on deep-dive reporting into current events.

“I want to marry up screenwriters with reporters,” he said in 2012 while promoting “Zero Dark Thirty,” which examined the killing of Osama bin Laden. “That’s assuming that this film does O.K. If it bombs, forget I said any of this.”

It became a hit, of course, taking in $132.8 million worldwide, and Mr. Boal finally has a company to carry out his vision: Page 1, which opened for business last week. Megan Ellison, the Oracle heiress who has helped finance and produce films like “American Hustle” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” has committed to “substantial” funding, Mr. Boal said.

Hugo Lindgren, who stepped down as editor of The New York Times Magazine late last year and previously worked at New York magazine, has joined Page 1 as its president. Mr. Lindgren will be based in New York.

9 years ago 1 note
“ The War Correspondents series kicks off May 8th and continues monthly through December, featuring guests such as Bob Woodruff of ABC News, Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker, and freelance photographers Michael Kamber and Robert Nick. ” Tickets...

The War Correspondents series kicks off May 8th and continues monthly through December, featuring guests such as Bob Woodruff of ABC News, Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker, and freelance photographers Michael Kamber and Robert Nick.

Tickets here.

11 years ago 0 notes
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