Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger - Restrepo

Restrepo, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s documentary about one American platoon fighting in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, has been picked up for distribution and will be shown in theaters starting in summer 2010. The movie’s website has information on screenings, and the trailer is available to watch online.

Tyler Hicks - A Scrapbook From the Tribal Areas - NYT At War Blog

The New York Times’ blogs keep getting better and better. Everyone knows Lens, but perhaps At War isn’t as well known. Formed out of the now defunct Baghdad Bureau blog, At War is “a reported blog from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era.” There’s always something interesting to read or see, from the above seized pictures from Pakistan’s restive Waziristan to Franco Pagetti’s grandmother’s gnocchi recipe as served to Ashley Gilbertson for a birthday to a translator’s perspective on speaking with a would-be suicide bomber to downtime on patrol with Afghan and American soldiers.

A number of photographers currently contribute or have contributed to the blog (that list isn’t up to date), and the archives are worth a look: Peter Van Agtmael, Tyler Hicks, Christoph Bangert, Michael Kamber, Johann Spanner, Ashley Gilbertson, and Joao Silva

Asim Rafiqui’s “The Spinning Head” blog remains one of my favorite places for analysis of contemporary photojournalism. One of his latest pieces, “Offering Silence To The Oppressed Or How Photography Can Become A Weapon Of Repression,” offers up an important counterpoint to the praise lately heaped on the recently opened London exhibition of Israeli and Palestinian photographers, Beware the Cost of War (more at 100eyes). The exhibition presents images of conflict without captions or credits. Rafiqui’s central points, buoyed by John Barger’s visual-philosophical framework, are that:

• The exhibition removes context, so that we never know who is the occupier, and who the occupied…
• The exhibition removes chronology, so that we never know whether the act occurred this year…
• The exhibition removes history, so that we never know what it is that violence represents…
• The exhibition removes the ugliest of constant and material facts…

Well worth a read.

Edit: To be clear, both 100eyes and Lens’ presentations of the work include captions of the pictures. The captions remain separate from the pictures, but exist nonetheless. Also, Conscientious Redux continues the conversation.

Caucasas by Antonin Kratochvil -- part of Our World At War by VII and the International Committee of the Red Cross

VII and the International Committee of the Red Cross have just unveiled their globe-spanning project documenting current humanitarian crises, “Our World At War.” The work includes: Lebanon by Franco Pagetti, Afghanistan by James Nachtwey, Haiti by Ron Haviv, Caucasus by Antonin Kratochvil, Liberia by Christopher Morris, Colombia by Franco Pagetti, Philippines by James Nachtwey, and Congo by Ron Haviv.

Found via lightstalkers, Bruce Haley’s excellent Tao of War Photography is 60+ nuggets of wisdom from a career spent in the trenches. Worth a laugh, worth a tear, worth a read. Among the treasures:
”

• 10. It is said that sudden fright causes people to soil themselves… I have noticed that sustained fright causes increased flatulence: fear-farting… I have also seen Afghan mujahideen run out into a heavy rain of incoming artillery rather than shelter in a small crevice with two fear-farting Western journalists……
• 18. If you don’t understand the entire concept of indirect fire, do not go to a war zone… If you only remember one thing from this article, let this be it…….
• 23. You know you’re in trouble when the new head of your once-reputable agency sends out a form letter asking his photographers to shoot “quirky Americana” stories…..
• 30. You will see the exact same wretched mongrel dog in every third world country you visit… after a while you will come to believe that it has a passport and is following you from country to country……
• 31. Huge, menacing rats like to perch upon sleeping photographers’ faces at 3 a.m in seedy hotels in warring portions of the former Soviet Union…..”

more here

And while we’re talking about Bruce Haley, he had a conversation with Joerg at Conscientious a while back. It’s a great discussion of, among other things, the purpose and effectiveness of conflict photography, public reaction to conflict photography, personal philosophy, how he approaches stories, and what venues are most appropriate for which images. Lots of wisdom there.