Reuters and MediaStorm collaborated to create Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War.
Check it out here.
Category: War
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Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War – MediaStorm
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Friend's Death Shows Cost of Iraq War – washingtonpost.com
The Death of Russian photographer Dmitry Chebotayev.In my nightmares, the helicopters still come out of a dark sky, two black spots barely visible against the backdrop of night.
Their swirling blades grow louder until they finally touch down on earth and fall silent. They look like giant steel bugs from another planet, bulbous robots with eyes of glass coming to take away their prey: seven human beings who woke one day in Iraq not knowing they would be dead by noon.
Six American soldiers. One Russian photographer.Check it out here.
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Lori Grinker: 15 Years Documenting War – – PopPhotoMarch 2008
Five years was about how long Lori Grinker thought it would take document the stories of former soldiers; she was only off by a decade.
Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict (de.MO), a 248-page collection of intimate color portraits and searing first-person accounts of postwar existence was published in March, 2005 — 15 years and 30 countries after she began the photographic odyssey.
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Press Photos from Iraq: What Will History Say?
When you close your eyes and think of Iraq, what do you see in your mind’s eye?
Is it a picture of charred bodies hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates River in Fallujah? Is it a picture of a Marine climbing a massive statue of Saddam Hussein to place an American flag on its face, hours after the fall of Baghdad?
Or is it a picture of an Iraqi prisoner standing on a box, arms outstretched with wires attached, a fabric bag covering his headCheck it out here.
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AP: Hidden Toll in Iraq — 70,000 U.S. Soldiers Suffering from Hearing Damage
Hearing damage is the No. 1 disability in the war on terrorism, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and some experts say the true toll could take decades to become clear. Nearly 70,000 of the more than 1.3 million troops who have served in the two war zones are collecting disability for tinnitus, a potentially debilitating ringing in the ears, and more than 58,000 are on disability for hearing loss, the VA said.
“The numbers are staggering,” said Theresa Schulz, a former audiologist with the Air Force, past president of the National Hearing Conservation Association and author of a 2004 report titled “Troops Return With Alarming Rates of Hearing Loss.”
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Congo's Silent Scream silent scream – Roanoke.com
This was the summer of 2006, and Melanie Blanding, a photographer from Roanoke, was in the Democratic Republic of Congo to take a series of portraits of women scarred by war. The women are victims of violent, often monstrous sexual assaults, and their numbers appear to be growing.
Picture a photographer in Africa to document wartime casualties and you might envision a strapping, grizzled veteran loaded down with cameras. But that’s not Blanding.Check it out here.
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Eugene Richards On "War is Personal" – PDN
Documentary photojournalist Eugene Richards has a long career of producing powerful projects on social issues such as drug abuse, mental illness and aging. He is now working on a project on the impact of the Iraq war titled “War is Personal.” Helped by a grant from National Geographic Magazine, he is traveling around the U.S. to work on a series of stories mainly about veterans and their families. PDN recently sat down with Richards at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y., to talk about the project.
Check it out here.
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A Bloody Stalemate In Afghanistan – Korengal Valley – New York Times
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.”
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BATTLESPACE | NYC | November Eleven
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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, ZalmaiFeb 28—April 30
Opening reception Feb 28, 6-8pm
Gallery FCB
16.W 23rd Street NYCCheck it out here.
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Celebrated Conflict Photog Reveals True Identity – Digital Chosunilbo
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.
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The 'Inside' Story On A Mutiny In Iraq
: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.”
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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.
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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.
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Saved From a Lynching – APhotoADay News
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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.
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Out of Africa – Reuters Photographers
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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.
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World Press Photo – Photo of the Year – Tim Hetherington
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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.
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Photo Essay: Kenya, By Marcus Bleasdale
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.
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Photographer describes wars in pictures – News
: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.
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State of the Art: Last Dispatch from Ernie Pyle
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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.
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VII Photo Essay – The Valley – by Balazs Gardi
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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
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