Showing war, and succumbing to it
Libyan rebel forces fire a heavy rocket propelled grenade at a building holding government loyalist troops in Misrata, Libya -- one of the final photographs of photojournalist Chris Hondros. Credit: Getty Images/Chris Hondros
War photographers unleash the power of reality, the raw human experience of conflict too often described in the dry language of diplomacy or the doublespeak of politics. It takes courage, heart and luck to be armed only with a camera on the world's battlefields.
On Wednesday, Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington, very accomplished photojournalists, became casualties of the danger that attracts this special breed to the front lines. Both men, who called Brooklyn home, died in Misrata, Libya, from a grenade.
Hondros, who worked extensively in Iraq and had hundreds of his photos appear in Newsday, died the day his photos were on the world's front pages. Hours earlier he had sent his editors at Getty Images searing pictures of rebels in combat with loyalists in a burning building.
Hetherington, best known for his Oscar-nominated documentary "Restrepo," which followed U.S. soldiers over 15 months in Afghanistan's badlands, had just tweeted about shelling by pro-government forces, with no sign of NATO. Between assignments for Vanity Fair, Hetherington was where the action was.
In 2006, Hondros won the Robert Capa medal, named in honor of another generation's legendary war photographer. Capa is remembered for his iconic images of the Spanish Civil War and D-Day landing on Omaha Beach for Life Magazine. He was killed in 1954, in a conflict in Indochina, now long forgotten, just as the one in Libya will be someday.
Hondros and Hetherington knew they might die with their cameras. They went to war anyway, because there was a story to be told. hN
