Timothy Alistair Telemachus Hetherington (5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011)[2] was a British photojournalist.[3] He produced books, films and other work that "ranged from multi-screen installations, to fly-poster exhibitions, to handheld device downloads"[4] and was a regular contributor to Vanity Fair.[5]
Shortly after graduation he received £5,000 from his grandmother's will, which enabled him to travel for two years in India, China and Tibet.[4] That trip made him realise he "wanted to make images", so he "worked for three to four years, going to night school in photography before eventually going back to college."[4] He then studied photojournalism under Daniel Meadows and Colin Jacobson in Cardiff in 1996.[13]
Hetherington's first job was that of a trainee at The Big Issue, in London.[7][13] He was their sole staff photographer,[13] photographing homeless shelters, demonstrations, dockers' strikes, boxing gyms, celebrities, etc.[7] He was not fond of his celebrity assignments, wanting to focus on what he believed to be more serious stories.[7] He spent much of the next decade in West Africa, documenting political upheaval and its effects on daily life in Liberia, Sierra Leone,[14]Nigeria, and other countries. Hetherington worked as a photographer on the films Liberia: An Uncivil War[15] (2004) and The Devil Came on Horseback[16] (2007). In 2006, Hetherington took a break from image-making to work as an investigator for the United Nations Security Council's Liberia Sanctions Committee.[17]
Diary is a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of reporting. It's a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media.[19]
Death
In a June 2010 interview for The New York Times, when asked by photojournalist Michael Kamber about Infidel, the book he did with Chris Boot that was about to be published, Hetherington commented on the level of danger he encountered when working on it:[20]
The first time I went to Afghanistan, in 2007, the world was very much focused on Iraq. People had forgotten – and now we have come to accept – that the Afghan war was going out of control. When I got to the Korangal Valley, and there was lots of fighting going on, it completely surprised me. I was gobsmacked. At the end of October 2007, 70 percent of American bombs being dropped were in that valley, and the casualty rate was at 25 percent wounded. So the images I made were very action oriented. Photojournalism. Reminiscent of classical war photography. I did that because I wanted people to see that there was a lot of fighting going on. Anyway, I go back and the fighting sort of bored me. Because when you are in a lot of combat after a while, a lot of it – you know? If you are inside a base that's being attacked, like Restrepo was, you are in a fairly good position. The likelihood of you being killed was pretty low, unless they put a mortar on you.
Hetherington was killed while covering the front lines in the besieged city of Misrata, Libya, during the 2011 Libyan civil war.[21] There appeared to be uncertainty whether he was killed by shrapnel from a mortar shell or an RPG[22] round. One report said "several Libyan rebels" were killed in the blast, and at least two other journalists survived.[23] The same attack killed photographer Chris Hondros, gravely wounded photographer Guy Martin,[24] and wounded photographer Michael Christopher Brown.[22]
A source said that the group was travelling with rebel fighters.[22] Hetherington had tweeted the previous day,
In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO.[25][26]
Hetherington survived the initial incident and was loaded into a van alive, but died due to excessive blood loss.[27]
Hetherington in 2010
Hetherington was buried in Brompton Cemetery, London, survived by his partner, parents, sister, brother, and several nieces and nephews.[28]
Just days after his death in Misrata, the Libyan city of Ajdabiya renamed its largest square after him. Anti-Gaddafi protesters also held a march to the newly renamed Tim Hetherington Square in his honour. "We have named the square after this hero and I now consider Tim as one of our martyrs," Al Jazeera quoted a Libyan surgeon in the city as saying.[29]
Senator John McCain sent two American flags to a memorial service in New York: one was given to the Hetherington family; the other was presented to filmmaker Idil Ibrahim,[23] Hetherington's life partner and co-worker at Zeila Films, where he had served as head cinematographer / director of photography.[30][31] The flags were delivered at the service by four American veterans of Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne in Afghanistan, who had been "many times ... under fire with Tim" and Junger, who wrote the account of the service.[23]
Personal life
Hetherington was in a romantic relationship with Idil Ibrahim before he was killed during the Libyan Civil War.[32]
2000-2004: Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts (NESTA) "to investigate how online technology can reinvent the traditions of documentary photography to ensure it stays relevant to the 21st century".[34]
2001: World Press Photo, 1st prize, Portraits stories.[35]
Tales from a Globalizing World. London: Thames and Hudson, 2003. ISBN978-0-500-28432-2. Edited by Daniel Schwartz. Hetherington contributes a short essay, "Healing Sport", and photographs with text.
The World's Top Photographers: Photojournalism. Brighton & Hove: Rotovision, 2006. ISBN978-2-88893-092-1. Hetherington contributes photographs and captions. Edited by Andy Steele.
2013: Tim Hetherington: You Never See Them Like This, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, September–November 2013.[48]
2014: Tim Hetherington: Infidel, Photofusion, London, 22 August - 17 September 2014; resuming 1–31 October 2014. A "mixture of photographs and video, drawn from his series Infidel and Diary".[49][50]
Korengal (2014). By Sebastian Junger. Sequel to Restrepo. Feature-length film. Hetherington contributed cinematography and photo credits.
Legacy
The Tim Hetherington Grant is awarded annually by World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch to a photographer who has participated in a recent World Press Photo Contest in order to finalise a project on a human rights theme.[52]
Sebastian Junger's documentary film Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington (2013), backed by HBO Films, is a tribute to Hetherington.[n 3][53][54][55]
Hetherington's estate was represented by Magnum Photos.[56] He was preparing to apply to the photo agency before he died. His estate is now represented by Imperial War Museums.[57]
The Tim Hetherington Trust was set up in 2012 by Hetherington's parents Judith and Alistair,[58] with Stephen Mayes its executive director.[59][60] Its website states its mission is "to preserve the legacy of Tim's professional life as a visual storyteller and human rights advocate" including "the support and nurture of new work that continues the ideals demonstrated by Tim with special emphasis on humanitarian and social concerns".[61]
^Press release (21 April 2011). "Tim Hetherington (1970 –2011)". Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Retrieved 24 April 2011. "LMH is sad to learn of the death of alumnus Tim Hetherington, 1989 Classics and English, who was killed in Misrata on Wednesday 20th April, while covering the conflict in Libya for Vanity Fair."
^ abcStaff writer (22 April 2011). "Bodies of Two Photographers Killed in Libya Arrive in Benghazi". CNN. Retrieved 25 April 2011. The journalists were walking in the front-line area at the end of Tripoli Street on the western edge of Misrata when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded, according to a town resident who wanted to be identified only as "Mohammed" for safety reasons.
