(5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011)
Early life
Hetherington was born in Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula and grew up in Southport, Sefton, where he attended St Patrick's Primary School.[9] He went on to attend Stonyhurst College[10] and read Classics and English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in 1989.[11] Shortly after graduation he received £5,000 from his grandmother's will, money which enabled him to travel for two years in India, China and Tibet.[7] That trip made him realize 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."[7] He then studied photojournalism under Daniel Meadows and Colin Jacobson in Cardiff in 1996.[12]Career
Hetherington's first job was that of a trainee at The Big Issue, in London, where he was the sole staff photographer.[12]Hetherington spent much of the next decade in West Africa, documenting political upheaval and its effects on daily life in Liberia, Sierra Leone,[2] Nigeria, and other countries. In the Second Liberian Civil War, he and his broadcast colleague James Brabazon were the only foreign journalists to live behind rebel lines, which earned them an execution order from then-Liberian President Charles Taylor. Hetherington was a photographer on Liberia: An Uncivil War (2004) and The Devil Came on Horseback (2007).
Hetherington won the 2007 World Press Photo competition for his picture of a tired American soldier covering his face with his hand following a day of fighting in the Korengal valley, Afghanistan.[13] The work was made for Vanity Fair, for which he was a contributing photographer.[14] Hetherington made several trips to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 with writer Sebastian Junger; the two collaborated on the 2010 documentary Restrepo based on their assignment in Afghanistan.[15] The film received the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.[16] In 2006, Hetherington took a break from image making to work as an investigator for the United Nations Security Council's Liberia Sanctions Committee.
Hetherington received a 2009 Alfred I. duPont Award in broadcast journalism,[17] and the 2008 Rory Peck Features award for his broadcast work titled Afghanistan – The Other War, which was also made in the Korengal Valley and aired on Nightline, a programme of ABC News.
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:[18]Hetherington was killed while covering the front lines in the besieged city of Misrata, Libya, during the 2011 Libyan civil war. There appeared to be uncertainty whether he was killed by a mortar shell[8] or an RPG[19] round. The same attack also killed photographer Chris Hondros and gravely wounded photographer Guy Martin. A source said that the group was travelling with rebel fighters.[19] Hetherington tweeted the previous day, "In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO".[20][21]
Hetherington is survived by his mother, father, sister, brother and three nieces and nephews.[22]
Just days after Hetherington's death in Misrata, the Libyan city of Ajdabiya renamed its largest square after him. Anti-Gaddafi protesters also held a march to the newly rechristened 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.[23]
Books
- Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold. Umbrage, 2009. ISBN 188416773X.
- Infidel. Chris Boot, 2010. ISBN 1905712189. About Afghanistan.
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