When photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington died from a shelling attack while on assignment in Libya in 2011, he left behind a legacy stubbornly defiant of categorization.
Hetherington had won numerous World Press Photo awards, published in most of the world’s major English-language periodicals and received an Academy Award nomination for Restrepo – a documentary about the American war in Afghanistan that he had co-directed with fellow journalist and author Sebastian Junger.
However, Hetherington’s CV also included work atypical of the career combat photographer. He had produced video installations, prose pieces and a photographic portfolio that included views of combat distinct from the English press’ typically pyrotechnic treatment of war.
“He was a photographer who was very interested in telling stories, in being in places long-term,” says Chris Wise, a friend of Hetherington’s and owner of Bangkok’s WTF Gallery, which will be showcasing an exhibition of Hetherington’s work, beginning April 4.
“[Hetherington] was someone who was so smart and articulate. He wasn’t just the guy with the camera. He had a really different perspective.”
This perspective is preserved via one of the past decade’s most compelling collections of visual journalism.
In the early ‘00s, Hetherington moved to Monrovia to cover Liberia’s Second Civil War, then continued living in the country long after hostilities had ceased. From this experience emerged 2009’s Long Story Told Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold, a book of photographs and prose that chronicled not only the country’s civil war, but also the Liberian people’s subsequent struggle toward democracy.
This same attention to the quotidian aspects of conflict characterized Hetherington’s 2010 collection of photojournalism – Infidel. Composed of images culled from his yearlong stay at Observation Post Restrepo in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley (a time that would ultimately produce the documentary of the same name), Infidel recreates the frustrating, monotonous and surreal experience of twenty-first century war.
Included in the book are photographs of soldiers roughhousing, hitting golf balls and playing Guitar Hero in order to pass the interminable hours between engagements with Afghan insurgents. One section of the book features portraits of the soldiers sleeping.
“[‘Sleeping Soldiers’] was a very simple idea, a very kind of obvious thing, but everyone else who had been to war overlooked it,” says Wise. “Tim saw it and looked at these kids who are basically 19-years-old, sleeping like babies.”
WTF’s exhibition of Hetherington’s work, which Hetherington and Wise had begun planning shortly before the former’s death, includes photographs from Infidel and other examples Hetherington’s multimedia ventures.
The gallery will be showing Diary, a video Hetherington composed from flip-camera footage compiled throughout his years as a war correspondent, as well as a three-screen installation of “Sleeping Soldiers,” which employs the still shots described above, interspersed with footage of those same soldiers going about their work in the field.
“Infidel” temporary tattoos, a cheeky nod to one of American combat soldiers’ tribal obsessions, will be on offer to the show’s attendants.
“The tone of [this show] is not ‘Guys Shooting Guns,’” says Wise. “It’s guys in a difficult situation and it’s interesting details of a life that most people sort of know goes on, but don’t really.”
Wise’s multi-faceted approach echoes Hetherington’s own opinions about photojournalism. In a 2010 interview with the New York Times’ “Lens” blog, Hetherington said, “I am interested in visually representing something in as many ways as possible, exploiting as many different forms as possible, to reach as many people as possible.”
Infidel, both the book and the exhibition at WTF, combines a variety of formats to tell the story of conflict in its variegated and sometimes self-contradictory aspects.
“[The way the show is set up], that was the concept that Tim wanted,” says Wise, “not to take it too seriously in terms of, ‘Are these fine art pieces?’ It’s just another way to tell a story.”
FIND IT:
“Tim Hetherington: Infidel”
WTF Café and Gallery 7
Sukhumvit Soi 51, Wattana, Klongton-Nua
Free admission
Opening reception: April 4, 6 – 9pm
