Showing posts with label Chris Hondros. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Hondros. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Hondros, Hetherington Prizes Awarded at Eddie Adams Workshop


 pdn

Via PDN


Among the awards given out at the 24th annual Eddie Adams Workshop, held October 7 through 10 in Jeffersonville, New York, were two prizes created in memory of photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, who were killed in Misrata, Libya on April 20, 2011.

The Chris Hondros Fund, created after his death to support young photojournalists, gave a $2500 prize and a print to Workshop attendee Enrico Fabian.  The Tim Hetherington Memorial Award, a $2,000 prize, was given to Dominic Braccome. The prize was funded by a collection taken at a gathering of Hetherington’s friends and colleagues held at New York’s Bubble Lounge days after his death.

Each year, the intensive, four-day Workshop ends with a memorial to photojournalist Eddie Adams, the Workshop’s founder, and six of his Vietnam-era colleagues who were killed covering war. This year, the memorial was made more poignant with the addition of tributes to Hondros and Hetherington.

Hondros, a 1993 Workshop alumnus, was remembered with a screening of short interview excerpts from the 2007 documentary In Service: Pittsburgh to Iraq. In one segment, Hondros, who had covered the Iraq war for Getty Images, spoke about the gap between American and Iraqi culture, saying, “Our government is infatuated with Iraq but our people are not.”

Jamie Wellford, international photo editor at Newsweek, told the audience that Hetherington had been looking forward to attending this year’s Workshop. On the day he died, Hetherington had emailed Wellford, but he didn’t receive it until after Hetherington’s death, because it  “spent a week in digital purgatory.” Wellford introduced a screening of Hetherington’s 19-minute film Diary. Made in 2010, it is a kaleidoscopic, deeply personal compilation of footage showing Hetherington’s view of his life as a war photographer.

Among the other prizes given out during the Workshop to Barnstorm participants:

The Colton Family Award, for the student who best embodies the spirit of the workshop, a $1000 Award and a spot on the Black team at next year’s Workshop:

Scott Mcintyre
$1000 Cash Awards From National Geographic (two):

Kiana Hayeri And Arthur Bondar
$500 Awards From LIFE Magazine (Two):

Gregory Gieske, David Maurice Smith
Assignments from Newsweek, People, Sports Illustrated, Esquire Digital, AARP and AARP Bulletin, AP, Getty Images, The Los Angeles, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other newspapers and publications were also given out. Additional awards of services or gift certificates were offered by Altpick, B& H Photo, Mac Group and PDN.

A full list of 2011 participants is available on  http://www.eddieadamsworkshop.com/.

–with reporting by Jill Waterman

Monday, April 25, 2011

Memorials Planned for Photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington

Via Photo District News





Memorials Planned for Photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington


The families of two photojournalists killed in a rocket attack on Misrata, Libya, on April 20 are organizing memorials.

Dean Hondros, brother of photographer Chris Hondros, announced that a memorial service will take place Wednesday, April 27, at 1 pm at Sacred Hearts St. Stephens Church in Brooklyn. Directions and information are available on the church’s Web site, http://www.delvecchiorc.com/; the phone number is (718) 246-8342.

In lieu of flowers, Hondros’s family and fiancee have suggested donations be made to The Chris Hondros Fund, which has just been launched: “This fund will provide scholarships for aspiring photojournalists and raise awareness of issues surrounding conflict photography.”

The Chris Hondros Fund
c/o Christina Piaia
50 Bridge Street #414
Brooklyn, New York 11201

The family of Tim Hetherington have created a web page, Timhetherington.org/condolences, where remembrances of their son are being posted. On the site, a note from Alistair and Judith Hetherington says, “We will be setting up a charitable organization to continue Tim’s humanitarian work around the world,” and adds, “Information will be posted here in the coming days.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Editor and Writer David Schonauer on the Risky History of the War Photographer

David Schonauer
David Schonauer
Former editor-in-chief, American Photo magazine


Via The Huffington Post
Hetherington, Hondros, and the Risky History of the War Photographer



To the list of photographers who have died while covering war and conflict, we must now add the names of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, killed in Misurata, Libya on Wednesday. They join the likes of Ken Oosterbroek, a member of the so-called Bang Bang Club of photojournalists immortalized now in a new movie. Oosterbroek was killed in 1994 while covering the violence in South Africa during the final days of apartheid. They join Olivier Rebbot, killed in El Salvador in 1981 while on assignment for Newsweek. Rebbot was a model for the photographer played by Nick Nolte in the 1983 film Under Fire. They join Robert Capa, killed near Thai Binh, Vietnam in 1954, who was the model for all who would follow in his profession. If the war photographer has come to be seen as a romantic figure, we have the Hemingwayesque Capa to thank.


It was Capa, famed for covering the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach, who said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," and the photographers who followed him into Vietnam took his advice. Vietnam was a particular deadly place for photographers, who jumped aboard helicopters alongside soldiers to fly into firefights. The names of the dead -- Larry Burrows, Gilles Caron, Henri Huet, Robert Ellison, Dickie Chapelle, Charles Eggleston, and Oliver Noonan among them -- have become legend. The haunting 1997 book Requiem memorialized these journalists -- 135 photographers from different nations known to have died in Vietnam. In the book's introduction, David Halberstam described why their job was so dangerous:

"War correspondents always know who is real and who is not. A war zone is not a good setting for the inauthentic of spirit and heart. We who were print people and who dealt only in words and not in images always knew that the photographers were the brave ones, and in that war... they held a special place in our esteem. We deferred to them, reporter to photographer, in that venue as we did in few others."

They were real because they had to be real; they could not, as we print people could, arrive a little late for the action, be briefed, and then, through the skilled use of interviews and journalism, re-create a scene with stunning accuracy, writing a marvelous you-are-there story that reeked of intimacy even though, in truth, we had missed it all. We could miss the fighting and still do our jobs. They could not. There was only one way for them to achieve intimacy: by being eyewitnesses.

I knew Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, but not especially well -- in the case of Chris, we went out for beers on a couple of occasions and spoke on the telephone a few times when he wrote a story for the photography magazine I edited. (He was a fine writer, too; urgent, clear, and caring.) My acquaintance with Tim was very brief -- I interviewed him last November, over coffee at a hotel lobby in New York, about his book Infidel, which had just come out. In similar ways, Chris and Tim impressed me, immediately and lastingly, as superior people -- humble, humorous, dedicated, and very intelligent. Real, as Halberstam put it.

Halberstam noted that the Vietnam War began "in an era of black-and-white photography and ended in one of color videotape beamed by satellite to television stations all over the world." The world of photography has changed just as radically in the past ten years. On 9/11, when photographers raced to downtown Manhattan to document the devastating scenes there, most carried film cameras. At the time, the first professional-quality 35mm SLRs were just coming onto the market. News organizations and photo agencies anticipated America's reaction to the terrorist attacks and retooled, almost overnight. When American troops went to war in Afghanistan a few weeks later, photojournalists covered the story with digital cameras and satellite uplinks, ramping up the speed with which they could deliver pictures. Later in the decade, as the Internet took hold and the old-media world imploded, photographers began doubling as videographers and writers. (Underscoring the evolution, last year the Associated Press dropped its time-honored byline, "Associated Press Writer," with the more ambiguous "Associated Press.")

Tim Hetherington thrived in this new journalistic landscape. A skilled filmmaker as well as a photographer, he could tell a story through a number of media platforms. In his Oscar-nominated film Restrepo, and in his small but powerful photo book Infidel, he told the story of a U.S. combat unit in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, never veering far from the everyday reality of the soldiers' lives. "Symbols or representations of soldiers are often claimed by the far left and far right to mean a certain thing," he told me, "and we do these men an injustice by not digesting fully their reality."



2011-04-22-INF_FINAL_CMYK_HR_0096.jpg
An image from Hetherington's book Infidel



It's a dangerous job they do, and like others who do dangerous jobs they learn how to cope as best they can. A correspondent friend of mine who traveled with Chris Hondros on several stories in Iraq later told me that the photographer had taught him a valuable lesson about working in a combat area: to sleep when sleep was possible, in the lulls between action and danger. Chris, a recipient of the Robert Capa Gold Medal, a prestigious award for the highest level of war photography, knew what he was doing and why. And he no doubt understood the implications of another of Capa's famous comments: speaking of his work on D-Day, Capa said, "The war correspondent has his stake, his life, in his own hands and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute. I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave."


Please take a moment to write a message to Tim Hetherington's family and share it with his friends

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

If you knew the cause would take a limb or your life, or leave you beaten or raped, would you do it?

Award-winning photojournalist Tim Hetherington (right) known for his work in war zones, died Wednesday in the Libyan city of Misrata when he was hit by a mortar round. He is pictured here with Sebastian Junger, his co-director of the film Restrepo, which was nominated for the best-documentary Oscar this year.
Tim Hetherington

Award-winning photojournalist Tim Hetherington (right) known for his work in war zones, died Wednesday in the Libyan city of Misrata when he was hit by a mortar round. He is pictured here with Sebastian Junger, his co-director of the film Restrepo, which was nominated for the best-documentary Oscar this year.

Via NPR's The Picture Show

The Toll Of Covering Conflict

by Jacki Lyden



Joao Silva. Lynsey Addario. Tyler Hicks. Tim Hetherington. Chris Hondros: the names of photojournalists grievously wounded, kidnapped or killed in the line of duty since October 2010. The names and casualties of journalists harmed during conflicts seem to be mounting, leaving many of us who knew them or who have worked with them or - even those a few steps more removed - feeling a bit more vulnerable.


Nearly all journalists in conflict areas, or areas of disaster, take risks. Photojournalists, I think, are the biggest risk-takers for the cause because they must be more proximate, and the lens attracts attention.

If you knew the cause would take a limb or your life, or leave you beaten or raped, would you do it?

Phil Robertson, a New York based writer, has been close to Chris Hondros since they covered Iraq together beginning in 2002. As he told me today, "Conflict is a meat grinder and it destroys people's lives. We've seen way, way too many people get killed or injured, but this is OUR part of the war. It makes me realize more and more what the local civilians go through and how they feel."


I agree. And not only them, but the many local journalists who work for foreign organizations – like NPR. War is a terrible, uncertain, lethal condition. There will be other Misratas and Fallujahs and Korengal Valleys. I think the legacy, the honor, is to remember the people who put faces and feelings and emotions in front of us from those places, and reflect that there have always been stories, songs, and images of war and disaster. Perhaps their details blend over time, but we would not have the details except for those brave enough to gather them.


Photojournalist Chris Hondros poses with a a former Liberian government soldier, at his home in Monrovia, Liberia, in 2005. Hondros' picture of Duo jumping into the air in exultation during a battle with rebel forces in 2003 was distributed around the world. Hondros was killed April 20 in Misrata, Libya.
Photojournalist Chris Hondros poses with a a former Liberian government soldier, at his home in Monrovia, Liberia, in 2005. Hondros' picture of Duo jumping into the air in exultation during a battle with rebel forces in 2003 was distributed around the world. Hondros was killed April 20 in Misrata, Libya


Robertson is writing a book at home now, in New York. He's the father of a toddler. But he has certainly taken risks and is thinking of Chris Hondros today. They shared rides in Afghanistan and a terrifying open-air truck ride in Fallujah.


And he and Hondros shared another ride. "He drove my wife and me and our new baby home from the hospital the day after our daughter, Zaina, was born in 2009," he said. "We were together on the most terrifying and beautiful days I have ever known."

Original post and slide show here.

Jacki Lyden is a correspondent and host for NPR.