PARK CITY, UT.- Julie Nester Gallery presents an exhibition of photographs by Tim Hetherington (1970-2011). The exhibition consists of photographs taken in Liberia and Afghanistan, and appear in parallel to the screening of HBO Documentary Films’ Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington during the Sundance Film Festival. The exhibition opens on Thursday, January 17, and will be on view through Wednesday, January 30.
Taken mostly from the center of political and social conflicts in West Africa and the Middle East, Tim Hetherington’s work focused on the experience of war from the perspective of the individual. Through his photographs, writing and films, Tim Hetherington gave us new ways to look at and think about human suffering. Tim was tragically killed on April 20, 2011, while photographing and filming in Libya.
The majority of the photographs in the exhibition feature photographs from the series Infidel which are intimate portraits of American troops stationed in eastern Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. Describing the photographs in Infidel, Hetherington said: “It’s all about the men. I didn’t want to pretend this was a book about the war in Afghanistan. It was a conscious decision. My book comments on the experience of the soldier. It’s brotherhood. The flow of pictures is to introduce you to the Korengal Valley first and then to see the men in an intimate way…To get to know them and how they lived. Then you see them in combat in the traditional combat style. Finally, you see them as young men, sleeping.”
Hetherington took these photographs over one year in 2007-2008. His year in Afghanistan also became the basis for the documentary Restrepo, which he co-directed with Sebastian Junger. The film was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2011 for Best Documentary Feature.
The other photos in the exhibition were taken by Hetherington during the Liberian civil war. Hetherington was fascinated with the dynamics of power, from the raw power wielded by the young men of rebel groups, to the corrupt power of the transitional government, to the possibilities of a democratically elected president. Hetherington captured portraits of people struggling to survive their new realities on both sides of the war, showing interpersonal human stories that are rarely communicated and easily overlooked among the more prevalent war headlines.
The family of Tim Hetherington has gifted The Estate of Tim Hetherington to The Tim Hetherington Charitable Trust. The Trust will use all proceeds from Hetherington’s photographs, exhibitions, books and films for humanitarian causes. Visit timhetherington.org for more information.
Born in 1970 in Liverpool, Tim Hetherington graduated from Oxford University and later studied at Cardiff University. A contributing photographer at Vanity Fair, Tim received numerous awards including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (2000-2004), a Hasselblad Foundation grant (2002), the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year, the Rory Peck Award for Features (2008), an Alfred I. duPont Award (2009), and the Leadership in Entertainment Award by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for his work on Restrepo (2011). His images posthumously became part of the Magnum Photo Archive. After his untimely death, the largest town square in Ajdabiya, Libya was renamed Tim Hetherington Square by anti-Qaddafi rebels.
