picturedept:

Tim Hetherington, Diary, 2010.

The year since the tragic death of Tim Hetherington has been a mix of mourning and celebration, for the loss of a young artist with incredible potential, yet one who made a great deal of powerful work within his lifetime. Though the exhibition of his work at Yossi Milo Gallery ended a month ago, one of the most remarkable works from the show is continually available online.

Diary is Hetherington’s stream of consciousness—a non linear sequence blurring the boundaries between foreign battlegrounds and the bucolic pastures of home. Yet the terms of war and peace are superseded by the internal struggle for meaning in the face of alienation—a battle fought both in times of conflict and comfort. Altogether this composition of cross-fading associations dramatically presents the way Hetherington sensed space, movement, and emotion.

His description of the work, as quoted from the Vimeo host page:

‘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.

Camera + Directed by Tim Hetherington
Edit + Sound design by Magali Charrier
19’ 08 / 2010

Libyan revolutionaries captured and killed Muammar Gaddafi more than seven months ago, but the dictator’s brutal tactics and antidemocratic ways live after him. Human-rights workers say that’s true not only within the high walls of the dictator’s former Ain Zara torture center but at other jails and penitentiaries across the country. Abdul is among at least 20 Ain Zara inmates whose relatives accuse guards of subjecting detainees to severe and regular beatings with everything from fists to sticks, metal rods, and chains. Family members say some of the prisoners have been repeatedly beaten on their genitalia, a form of punishment that—in addition to being excruciatingly painful—could leave its victims infertile. Others, according to relatives, have been tortured with Taser-style electroshock weapons.

A look inside Libya’s prisons provides plenty of fodder for your nightmares. 

blakegopnik:

Daily Pic: It’s that fire-orange light in the doorway at right, and the overcast blue glow outside, that make this photograph stand out. If André Liohn had taken it at any other moment, in any other light, it would be just another banal image of war. That it is not just another shot has now been confirmed, since it just helped Liohn win the Robert Capa Gold Medal of the Overseas Press Club of America. The photo ran in the May 9 issue of Newsweek’s international edition, and is from a portfolio titled “Almost Dawn in Libya,” made up of striking images shot by Liohn in the besieged city of Misrata before the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.  For me, what matters in this particular image is the very special, very classical beauty of the light in the picture as a whole – and the fact that the fighters in it could never have acknowledged that there was anything but horror around them. The photo’s blues and oranges seem to echo some of the greatest Islamic ceramics. (Their famous blue glaze, at least, is right there in the tiling of the fountain in the shot.) And the siege of Misrata represents an attack on everything such cultural treasures stand for.

The Daily Pic, along with more global art news, can also be found on the  Art Beast page at TheDailyBeast.com.

This one comes from creative director Dirk Barnett (who you may know from our ‘also-rans’ galleries), announcing to the staff that Newsweek won a number of photography awards.

Scott and I are very pleased to announce that Newsweek came away with a whopping 15 awards from the very prestigious annual American Photography competition. Out of over 8,100 international entries, only 324 are chosen, so it’s wonderful news that we made such an impression this year! Congrats to everyone at Newsweek, Newsweek International, and all of the amazing photographers for such impressive work.

Here is the winning list of photographers and the subjects they photographed:

• Chris Buck: Portrait of Michele Bachmann (ed: yes, that portrait of Michele Bachmann)
• Q. Sakamaki: Snow blankets area destroyed by tsunami
• Donald Weber: Tsunami coverage (2 photos)
• Balazs Gardi: Afghan soldier wears a plastic bag on his head during a dust storm.
• Andrew Hetherington: Portrait of Celine Dion 
• Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello: Portrait of Angelina Jolie (two photos)
• Alex Majoli: Refugees along the Libyan/Tunisian border (two photos)
• Andrew McConnell: Surfing in Gaza (two photos)
• Tim Hetherington: Libya coverage (two photos)
• Michael Zumstein: Gbagbo falls in Ivory Coast.

Tim Hetherington, as fate would have it, was later killed by Gaddafi forces’ “indiscriminate shelling,” per his last tweet, while covering the conflict in Libya. It’s quite bittersweet to see some of his final work would turn out to be award-winning, but heartwarming nonetheless.

Big congrats to all, and a thank you from your colleagues in the nwktumblr bat cave for keeping photojournalism alive and well. We’ll post some of the winning photographs on the tumblr in a jiffy.

cjchivers:

What’s this?

Hint: It’s related to that persistently unidentified cluster munition used last year in the war in Libya. More soon on the NYT’s At War blog.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

Provided in recent days by John McFarlane, an EOD Technical Field Manager working in Libya for MAG, the mine-clearing NGO.  More about John, and about his fresh set of field observations, will be on the blog, too.

It’s amazing how CJ is using the Web to identify curious munitions found on the ground in Libya. This is next level-type war reportage. FOLLOW HIM.

Welcome to Zintan.

Those were the words Saif al-Gaddafi, son of the former Libyan leader Moammar al-Gaddafi, said through an ironic smile when greeting a special adviser for Human Rights Watch—who writes of the former playboy’s first interview since his family was run from power on The Daily Beast.

wardrox:

How far removed from the real world do you have to be to think publishing, with no warning, a graphic image of a dead or dieing dying person covered in blood is fine? Newsweek’s Tumblr even calls the posting of the grotesque image “a necessity in an age of media-driven rumors”.

No, Newsweek, it fucking isn’t. Unless you think your readers are knuckle dragging, celebrity-masturbating, morons. Are your Tumblr followers people unable to understand something without you pushing an image of a corpse in their face?

I can only assume the people in charge of the Tumblr feeds for both Newsweek and The Atlantic live in some corner of an office, detached from the real world in some kind of bubble. The kind of bubble where reason and logic, common sense and common decency become warped by deadlines, hits, spin and hype.

I hate the internet sometimes.

Link here, warning: graphic.

Edit: I should probably point out the reason I name Newsweek and The Atlantic specifically is because they’re the two publications I follow on Tumblr who posted the image.

Edit 2: Newsweek have posted a video of “Muammar Gaddafi’s corpse being kicked through the streets of Sirte”. And I kid you not, they say “We’re posting it because many others have”. That is not a good reason.

Edit 3: The Guardian’s website has the image on its front page. Anyone going online to read the news in the UK will have that image unavoidably shown to them. Am I completely out of touch with what’s acceptable?

We didn’t mean to offend anyone with what we published here yesterday regarding Gaddafi’s death. We chose to do so because those images bear witness to the historical events that unfolded in Libya as the months-long rebellion overran the remaining walls of a fallen dictatorship.

These images, while graphic, were broadcast on multiple TV networks (CNN and al-Jazeera to name two) and led the front-pages of newspapers around the world. If we abstained, would that be “the high-road?” Or would we be missing out on covering a slice of history, and failing to convey the whole story to you guys? Keep in mind: we aren’t chasing deadlines on tumblr.

Occasionally the photographs and videos coming out of the Arab Spring uprisings just straight up suck. From them, we’re reminded of the absolute brutality of humanity. But, at the end of the day, Gaddafi, Ben Ali, Mubarak are out of power. That’s a direct result of the prevalence of camera phones, and the very fact people like you were able to witness the violent crackdowns on protesters in nearly real-time. It’s only fair that goes both ways.

Add: Here is Poynter’s breakdown of publications that did and didn’t use the images.

(Source: sausage-roller)

From the mag: 

In southern Tripoli’s Yarmuk neighborhood, discarded mementos litter the ransacked living quarters of Gaddafi’s son Khamis, commander of the notorious 32nd Brigade.

Photo by Alex Majoli / Magnum for Newsweek

To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he’d be on Mount Rushmore by now.

Andrew Sullivan (via soupsoup)

(via jessbennett)

After several hours, we were summoned to the residence, where I greeted the Libyan leader and sat down to hundreds of camera flashes. Gaddafi said a few completely appropriate words, as did I, and the press left. We began the conversation as Amado had suggested, talking about Africa in general and Sudan in particular. Libya, he promised, would help with alternative routes for humanitarian supplies to the refugees. This is going pretty well, I thought. He doesn’t seem crazy. Then, as Amado had predicted, he suddenly stopped speaking and began rolling his head back and forth. “Tell President Bush to stop talking about a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine!” he barked. “It should be one state! Israeltine!” Perhaps he didn’t like what I said next. In a sudden fit, he fired two translators in the room. Okay, I thought, this is Gaddafi.

An excerpt of an exclusive excerpt from Condoleezza Rice’s new memoir about the former secretary of state’s meeting with the Libyan leader, who once called her his “African princess.”