@theclick

Category: War

  • A Bloody Stalemate In Afghanistan – Korengal Valley – New York Times

    24afghan-add650 1.jpg

    Photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

    As I went to get some hot chocolate in the dining tent, the peaceful night was shattered by mortars, rockets and machine-gun fire banging and bursting around us. It was a coordinated attack on all the fire bases. It didn’t take long to understand why so many soldiers were taking antidepressants. The soldiers were on a 15-month tour that included just 18 days off. Many of them were “stop-lossed,” meaning their contracts were extended because the army is stretched so thin. You are not allowed to refuse these extensions. And they felt eclipsed by Iraq. As Sgt. Erick Gallardo put it: “We don’t get supplies, assets. We scrounge for everything and live a lot more rugged. But we know the war is here. We got unfinished business.”

    For sanity, all they had was the medics’ tent, video games and movies — “Gladiator,” “Conan the Barbarian,” “Dogma,” Monty Python. Down the road in the Pech Valley, soldiers played cricket with Afghan kids and had organized boxing and soccer matches. Lt. Kareem Hernandez, a New Yorker running a base on the Pech River, regularly bantered over dinner with the Afghan police. Neighbors would come by with tips. But here in the Korengal, the soldiers were completely alienated from the local culture. One night while watching a scene from HBO’s “Rome” in which a Roman soldier tells a slave he wants to marry her, a soldier asked which century the story was set in. “First B.C. or A.D.,” said another soldier. The first shook his head: “And they’re still living like this 800 meters outside the wire.”

    Check it out here.

  • BATTLESPACE | NYC | November Eleven

    AndrewCutraro.jpg
    :

    Photographs from Iraq and Afghanistan by Alvaro Ybarra Zavala, Andrew Cutraro, Ashley Gilbertson, Balazs Gardi, Ben Lowy, Christoph Bangert, Eros Hoagland, Ghaith Abdul Ahad, Guy Calaf, Jason Howe, Jehad Nga, Lucian Read, Luke Wolagiewicz, Mike Kamber, Moises Saman, Peter van Agtmael, Rita Leistner, Stefan Zaklin, Stephanie Sinclair, Teru Kuwayama, Yuri Kozyrev, Zalmai

    Feb 28—April 30 Opening reception Feb 28, 6-8pm Gallery FCB 16.W 23rd Street NYC

    Check it out here.

  • Celebrated Conflict Photog Reveals True Identity – Digital Chosunilbo

    200802150012_00.jpg

    Those who followed the story of the 23 Koreans kidnapped in Afghanistan in July last year may remember the name Kim Joo-seon, a Korean freelance reporter who went where no other Korean reporters were allowed to go. Kim scored an exclusive interview with Taliban commanders in the Ghazni region, the base of the Taliban militants, and filed story after story and photo after photo for the Chosun Ilbo, though few people knew who she was. Now “Kim” has finally revealed her true identity: Jean Chung. “I hid my real name because of my parents,” she said. “I’m the only daughter in my family. My parents would have a heart attack if they knew I was in Afghanistan. They still think that I was in India.” Chung has built a successful career as a photojournalist. After graduating from the department of Oriental Painting at Seoul National University’s College of Arts, she traveled to the U.S. and studied photojournalism at New York University and the University of Missouri.

    Check it out here.

  • The 'Inside' Story On A Mutiny In Iraq

    KennedyKelly_L.jpg:

    Kelly Kennedy and photographer Rick Kozak had gone out on a patrol earlier that morning in Adhamiyah, one of Baghdad’s worst neighborhoods before the troop “surge,” and were supposed to go on that second one during which the IED detonated — but at the last moment decided to stay and do some interviews on base. In the aftermath of the deaths that day, Kennedy and Kozak were asked to stand away, to give the soldiers privacy to deal with their anger and grief. One soldier she interviewed months later confessed that he’d “locked and loaded on me, had me in his sights,” she says. “He was bawling as he told me this. He’s a kid, and thought we’d sensationalize the story. That he’d considered hurting me really upset him, and he wanted to apologize about it.” In a story she posted the day after the bombing, Kennedy wrote that “this day showed why soldiers come back home with mental health issues, and why there should be no stigma attached to seeking help for those issues.”

    Check it out here.

  • 87 Journalists Killed on the Job in 2007, China Leads in Jailing Them

    Iraq was the deadliest place for journalists last year, while China led the rest of the world in jailing members of the news media and cracking down on freedom of expression, a media rights group reports. Russia and Iran also took significant steps to muzzle the media, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said. All told, 87 journalists were killed on the job in 2007. “More and more journalists are being killed and last year’s figure was the highest since 1994,” said the report.

    Check it out here.

  • Editorial Photographers UK | UK photographer kidnapped in Iraq

    Richard Butler was kidnapped in the southern city of Basra on Sunday, a police source told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

    Check it out here.

  • Saved From a Lynching – APhotoADay News

    :

    From The Vigilante Journalist blog: My first day on the ground in Kenya, I went into Mathare with a group of photographers after hearing that there had been some problems. Two mobs were facing off on the main street leading into the Nairobi slum. Once the dust had settled, I met an Italian photographer by the name of Enrico Dangnino. He was pretty shaken up. He had blood stains on his clothes and told me that earlier in the day they had witnessed a near lynching but were able to save the man’s life.

    Check it out here.

  • Out of Africa – Reuters Photographers

    dead-woman 1.jpg
    :

    I’ve been trying to write about some sport images that caught my eye while trawling through the Reuters file but I keep getting hung up on our pictures from Kenya.   They are so raw, so powerful and uncompromising that even the most accomplished images of cossetted sportsmen performing in completely controlled circumstances seem insignificant in comparison.

    Check it out here.

  • World Press Photo – Photo of the Year – Tim Hetherington

    0208WPAJSJJPicture 1.jpg
    :

    The international jury of the 51st annual World Press Photo Contest selected a color image of the UK photographer Tim Hetherington as World Press Photo of the Year 2007. The picture was taken 16 September 2007 and shows a US soldier resting at “Restrepo” bunker, named after a soldier from his platoon who was recently killed by insurgents. The 2nd Battalion Airborne of the 503rd US infantry is undergoing a deployment in the Korengal Valley in the Eastern province of Afghanistan. The valley is infamous as the site of downing of a US helicopter and has seen some of the most intense fighting in the country. Hetherington’s photograph is part of a picture story that was also awarded 2nd Prize in General News Stories. He had traveled to Afghanistan on assignment for Vanity Fair. “This image shows the exhaustion of a man – and the exhaustion of a nation,” says jury chairman Gary Knight, and adds “We’re all connected to this. It’s a picture of a man at the end of a line.” Fellow juror MaryAnne Golon commented: “I use all my energy to have people notice bad things. There’s a human quality to this picture. It says that conflict is the basis of this man’s life.”

    Check it out here.

  • Photo Essay: Kenya, By Marcus Bleasdale

    0207sahahha.jpg
    By Marcus Bleasdale:

    The post election violence in Kenya has killed nearly 1,000 and displaced 270,000. It is the most devastating violence to hit Kenya since its independence. Whilst politicians try to find solutions in Nairobi, the ethnic tensions in the Rift Valley reach new highs. Ethnic cleansing has led to killings and houses being burnt in a movement to shift different tribes out of their non-ancestral homes. Huge parts of different cities across the valleys have been razed to the ground and the inhabitants forced to flee. In the villages, warriors from opposing tribes battle with bows and arrows, rocks and occasionally guns to gain or regain control of their land. While the politician’s talk, the future of Kenya will depend, not on the final results of the discussions in Nairobi, but on the ability of Kenyans to forgive and live together again. That will take much longer.

    Check it out here.

  • Photographer describes wars in pictures – News

    t_kog84751.gif:

    Chris Hondros has seen the world at war first hand – and so has his camera lens. Working for Getty images as a war photographer for almost a decade, he has captured militiamen crying out in battle in the Second Liberian Civil War, American soldiers on raids in Iraq and children in the arms of their mothers in Sierra Leone’s refugee camps. Hondros brought these images, his experiences and his personal comments to Pitt yesterday afternoon in a lecture facilitated by the global and film studies departments, PittArts and Pittsburgh Filmmakers. About 70 people crammed into room 501 in the Cathedral of Learning for a slideshow of Hondros’ work and to hear his commentary.

    Check it out here.

  • State of the Art: Last Dispatch from Ernie Pyle

    capt673333a81d24454a8f0a31a4e75db7a.jpg
    :

    It is just a photograph of a body at the side of a road—another death among the millions of deaths of World War II. Yet this photo, long lost and never before published, has surprised historians. The dead man in the picture is Ernie Pyle, the famed war correspondent whose dispatches painted vivid portraits of the lives of common GIs. Pyle famously covered several theaters of war, including the brutal Italian campaign of 1943-1944, and was killed on April 17, 1945 on the island of le Shima, off Okinawa in the Pacific.  Even historians who have specialized in studying Pyle’s work and collecting his correspondence had never seen the image. The negative is long lost and only a few prints were known to exist.

    Check it out here.

  • VII Photo Essay – The Valley – by Balazs Gardi

    0128AJAJPicture 3.jpg
    :

    Korengal Valley is among the deadliest pieces of terrain in the world for U.S forces. The six-mile long strategic passage is located in northeastern Afghanistan surrounded by treacherous mountain ridges, which are held desperately by the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Nearly one-fifth of all combat in Afghanistan occurs in this valley, and nearly three-quarters of all the bombs dropped by NATO planes target the surrounding area. The Valley is the first leg of a former mujahideen smuggling route that was used to bring in men and weapons from Pakistan during the 1980s

    Check it out here.

  • Nextbook: Fighting Shots

    feature_764_story 1 1.jpg:

    Even if you’ve never heard his name, chances are you know the work of David Rubinger. For roughly six decades he worked as a Time-Life photographer, documenting Israel’s tumultuous history. Some of his photographs, such as the 1967 shot of Israeli paratroopers reaching the Western Wall, have become icons. In 1997 he was awarded the Israel Prize, the country’s highest award for achievement in the arts and sciences. Rubinger has now written a memoir, Israel Through My Lens, Sixty Years as a Photojournalist, just out from Abbeville Press.

    Check it out here.

  • Journalism Groups Chart False Statements on Iraq War

    War5_L.jpg

    Journalism Groups Chart False Statements on Iraq War: “A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.”

  • Telling War Stories

    0120-su_d01_persA_0120.jpg

    Telling War Stories: “Jeff Bundy, a photographer with the Omaha World-Herald, covered a Nebraska Army National Guard unit in Iraq during fall 2005. Bundy said books he has read about Vietnam suggest it was a much easier war to cover simply because of mobility. ‘When you talk to those guys, they’d just jump on a Huey, and they go out,’ Bundy said. ‘There was no jumping on a Huey for us. Now you have to do the paperwork and the disclaimers and get yourself on a flight. Because of the way the world has moved, it’s tougher to move throughout the country.’ And unlike the reporters who covered Vietnam, the journalists embedded with the military in Iraq signed an agreement acknowledging that all comments of military personnel are ‘on the record.’ In Vietnam, reporters made much greater use of unnamed sources.”

  • MediaStorm: Rape of a Nation by Marcus Bleasdale

    0121MCPicture 1 1.png

    MediaStorm: Rape of a Nation by Marcus Bleasdale: “The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is home to the deadliest war in the world today. An estimated 5.4 million people have died since 1998, the largest death toll since the Second World War, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC). IRC reports that as many as 45,000 people die each month in the Congo. Most deaths are due to easily preventable and curable conditions, such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, malnutrition, and neonatal problems and are byproducts of a collapsed healthcare system and a devastated economy. The people living in the mining towns of eastern Congo are among the worst off. Militia groups and government forces battle on a daily basis for control of the mineral-rich areas where they can exploit gold, coltan, cassiterite and diamonds. After successive waves of fighting and ten years of war, there are no hospitals, few roads and limited NGO and UN presence because it is too dangerous to work in many of these regions. The West’s desire for minerals and gems has contributed to a fundamental breakdown in the social structure.”

  • Frontline Blogger Covers War in Iraq With a Soldier’s Eyes – New York Times

    iraqbloggerb.190.jpg Frontline Blogger Covers War in Iraq With a Soldier’s Eyes – New York Times: “Instead, he has spent most of the last three years in Iraq, writing prolifically and graphically, and racking up more time embedded with combat units than any other journalist, according to the United States military. He has been shot at, buffeted by explosions and seen more people maimed — fighters and civilians, adults and children — than he can count. ‘The easiest thing in the world to write about is combat, because all the drama is there,’ said Mr. Yon, a fit, ruddy-faced 43-year-old who was a Special Forces soldier more than two decades ago. He insists that he still does not really know the rules of journalism, but says he has recently, grudgingly, accepted that he has become a journalist. His detailed, mostly admiring accounts of front-line soldiers’ daily work have won him a loyal following, especially among service members and journalists and bloggers who follow the war. One of his photographs showing an American soldier cradling an Iraqi girl injured in a car bombing (the girl later died) appeared on Time magazine’s Web site and was later voted one of top images of the year by visitors.”

  • Getty Images – News Blog » Blog Archive » The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

    b-bhutto-assassination-8.jpg

    Getty Images – News Blog » Blog Archive » The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto: “As the former prime minister’s car surged forward, I pushed out of the way, ahead of her vehicle. I needed to adjust my camera. In the melee, the shutter setting had been bumped down to 1/15th and 1/8th of a second, giving the photos an unintended impressionistic look. I turned on my flash, but just before resetting the lens, I turned and glanced back at her car. That’s when I heard three shots. I knew from the sound that they were fired close to her car. I watched her drop down through the sunroof. Instinctively, I raised my camera, my finger pressed down on the shutter, starting to shoot without looking. Just as the camera came up in front of my face, the bomb went off.”

  • Artist's war depiction has many faces, rough edges

    LA Times: In every war that Britain fights, the Imperial War Museum selects an artist to render that one image. Steve McQueen was chosen for the task at the start of the Iraq war, and he struggled for months to come up with it. Then he realized that it didn’t have to be just one image. It already was many. He imagined the faces of Britain’s war dead printed in the serrated frames of postage stamps. Peering out from under a stack of bills. Stuck on the envelopes of birthday cards. Lying silently in sheets in desk drawers. But the artistic rendering of the war still painfully underway for 7,100 British troops in southern Iraq has proved as controversial as the conflict itself. Here.