© Tim Hetherington
One of the still images from Tim Hetherington's "Sleeping Soldiers" project.
Hetherington, a British photographer and filmmaker who has a decade of experience in conflict photography, spent several months in 2007 and 2008 in Afghanistan. He and reporter Sebastian Junger were embedded with a platoon of U.S. soldiers in a remote outpost in the Korengal Valley.
A contributing photographer for Vanity Fair, Hetherington shot both stills and video in Afghanistan, sometimes aiming two cameras at once. The work won several major awards. A single image from the project was named the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year. ABC’s Nightline aired several segments with Hetherington’s video; the coverage won a Rory Peck Award, a broadcasting prize.
By the time Hetherington made his second trip to the Korengal Valley in 2008, he was focusing less on battle scenes and violence, and more on the emotions of the men in the platoon.
“A TV colleague of mine, whose grandfather had been in the army, said to him, ‘Only in war does society allow men to show love for each other,’” Hetherington said in a recent interview with PDN.
Hetherington went with the soldiers on their missions, but he also covered them at rest in camp as they blew of steam, fought with each other, and made jokes. He shot still photos of the men while they slept, which eventually became his "Sleeping Soldiers" series. Later, Hetherington worked closely with an editor, Magali Charrier, on producing multimedia projects from the video he gathered, including the "Sleeping Soldiers" triptych.
Jon Levy, the director of Foto8 and a longtime friend of Hetherington, brought Hetherington’s stills and the video to the New York Photo Festival earlier this month. The multimedia presentation won raves from people who saw it.
To view the presentation, visitors stood in a tiny, makeshift theater in a dark, curtained-off area of a warehouse. On three screens, a series of sounds and images dissolved in and out, one flowing into another. Soldiers are seen asleep and also engaged in combat. Images and sounds of helicopters and explosions fade in and out, as if part of a dream. On the soundtrack, gunfire mixes with voices breaking into sobs. “Who’s over there? Who’s over there?” “Oh my God.” “We’ve got not enough cover.” “I know, man.”
The presentation lasts five minutes, but the experience is so engrossing it is hard to keep track of exactly how much time has passed.
“I was interested in creating the three screens [presentation] as a way of pushing the boundaries of what we can apprehend,” Hetherington says. He observed that older viewers sometimes don’t like it. “Younger people obviously are much more in tune with it. I’m the MTV generation, I’m used to very quick cuts.”
Hetherington, who is on an assignment this week in Cambodia, doesn’t know where he will show the “Sleeping Soldiers” triptych next, but he hopes to bring it to other galleries or events. The still images of the sleeping soldiers have not been published, but Hetherington plans to sell prints of the work and to use the pictures in his upcoming book.
The multimedia piece does not try to explain what the Americans are fighting for. Instead it tackles how soldiers feel when they’re at war.
“In the newspaper, we expect pictures of people suffering or soldiers being heroic, yet the truth is much more nuanced than that,” Hetherington says. “I think what I’m presenting ... is a much more nuanced image of the soldiers. The soldiers that I know who see that work know that’s the reality. Know that they can laugh during firefights, know the complexity of feeling guilty that you may be involved in killing people, and at the same time seeing your friends being killed. It’s a very complex range of emotions.”
Related links
ABC News: The Valley of Death
Tim Hetherington: Projects
Related story
February 8, 2008: Tim Hetherington Wins World Press Photo Of The Year
