RIP for Hetherington, Restrepo Shooter

Tim Hetherington's reported death in action has devastated his war correspondent colleagues and the American troops he documented; Chris Hondros was also mortally wounded by mortars. Guy Martin, a Briton affiliated with the Panos photo agency, and Michael Christopher Brown - were wounded by shrapnel but expected to survive.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/20/2177314/doctor-journalist-killed-in-libyan.html#ixzz1K6dk4GJV
Reports are still sketchy. Update: see the New York Times coverage for further information. Here's one obit from the Wall Street Journal blog:

Tim Hetherington, co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Restrepo,” has been killed in Libya. Several news outlets, including ABC News, have reported on his death, and Vanity Fair, where he worked as a contributing photographer, tweeted that his passing had been confirmed.

The 41-year-old Hetherington apparently was the victim of a mortar attack in Misrata that wounded several other journalists.

“Restrepo” tracked a platoon of soldiers in Afghanistan, and was co-directed by Sebastian Junger, author of “The Perfect Storm.”

Hetherington began his career in photography in 1997. His assignments took him to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Liberia and other places.

His last tweet reads “In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO.”

More journalists captured in Libya

Oh no. That's 13 and counting. Four missing Al Jazeera reporters are joined by three from Agence France Presse. And there still is no word of the NY Times quartet under arrest in Tripoli and whose release had been promised Friday, the day before the allied air assault got underway. Harrowing times. Are they part of Gaddhafi's human shield or what?
See here for full story on the LA Times blog.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/03/libya-three-more-journalists-missing.html

AFP reporter Dave Clark and photographer Roberto Schmidt had informed the agency in an e-mail Friday night that they planned to meet opponents of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi and speak with refugees fleeing the fighting between rebels and loyalists. They were accompanied by Joe Raedle of Getty Images, the agency said.

Lotfi al-Messaoudi, a Tunisian, Ahmed Vall Ould Addin, a Mauritanian, Ammar al-Hamdan, a Norwegian cameraman, and British national Kamel Atalua from Al Jazeera were arrested while "carrying out their duties" in western Libya. Al Jazeera cameraman Ali Hassan al-Jaber was killed on March 12 and brave Libyan videoblogger Mohammed "Mo" Nabbous was killed yesterday.

addendum: Six more Libyan journalists are said to be missing, too.

Moore's Arlington grave shot wins top prize

Getty's award-winning photographer, John Moore, has won another prize, this time for best magazine image, awarded by the U of Missouri Pictures of the Year International competition.

In his own words, Moore, a former wire photographer who also won World Press kudos for his image of Benazir Bhutto's assassination in the street of Rawalpindi, tells the story behind his poignant picture of an army ranger's fiancee in mourning last Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery.

Mary said that they had planned to get married after Jimmy’s four years of service were up next year. “We loved each other so much,” she said. “We thought we had all of the time in the world.”

Later on, I passed by and she was lying in the grass sobbing, speaking softly to the stone, this time her face close to the cold marble, as if whispering into Jimmy’s ear.

Some people feel the photo I took at the moment was too intimate, too personal. Like many who have seen the picture, I felt overwhelmed by her grief, and moved by the love she felt for her fallen sweetheart.

After so much time covering these wars, I have some difficult memories and have seen some of the worst a person can see - so much hatred and rage, so much despair and sadness. All that destruction, so much killing. And now, one beautiful and terribly sad spring afternoon amongst the rows and rows of marble stones - a young woman’s lost love.

I felt I owed the Arlington National Cemetery a little time - and I think I still do. Maybe we all do.

...from John Moore's blog on Getty Images website