Tim Hetherington was best known as a photojournalist and
filmmaker. A man who toured the worlds hot spots taking still photographs and
moving images of war. Like Don McCullin
before him Hetherington wanted to record the extremities of human behaviour to
highlight the insanity of war, taking images of real people in unique
circumstances. In Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim
Hetherington (2013) friend and colleague Sebastian Junger has put
together a moving tribute to this rather affable man who was killed by an army
mortar in Misrata, Libya in April 2011 while he was covering the uprising
against the Gaddafi regime in what was known as the Arab Spring. It was Junger
that was co-director on the Oscar nominated Restrepo (2010) a documentary that explores the 12 months the two
men spent in the dangerous Korengal Valley in Afghanistan embedded with a
Platoon of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.
In the film we witness
Hetherington in Liberia, Afghanistan and Libya photographing images up there on
the front line, but the best of his work is not the graphic pictures of the
aftermath of some bloody battle that we witness on the daily news coverage that
impresses, but the more thoughtful shots like sleeping soldiers taken during
the filming of Restrepo or the boy
soldiers armed to the teeth and of course the people caught up in a war
situation through no fought of their own.
We hear that
Hetherington has complained to his parents that he had a problem getting and
keeping a girlfriend but he is told in no uncertain terms that this kind of
relationship will not happen while touring the world most of the year to take
photos in what could be described as dangerous situations! Like McCullin, our
young photojournalist does seemed addicted to war zones, and like the 18
and 19 year olds that actually fight in them it seems harder for him to adapt
to the quiet and serenity of life back home. Just before his death at 40 he did build a
relationship with the Somali/American film maker Idil Ibrahim whose was
probable in a better position to understand what drove Tim Hetherington to
return time and time again to situations that would directly threaten his life.
This documentary is very well put together and I found it sad and poignant that
such an engaging humanitarian would die whist carrying out a job that he
obviously loved. Take note this film deserves a far wider distribution.
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| Tim Hetherington R.I.P |
