A Group of Conflict Photographers Runs Out of Luck

It was the photographer Joao Silva, lying in a hospital bed in Washington, his legs blown off in Afghanistan, who confirmed that my close friend was dead.

A Libyan rebel, photographed by Chris Hondros.

A villager in Afghanistan carrying a child wounded in an American attack, photographed by Tim Hetherington.

“I’ve got news for you, brother, and it’s not good,” he said simply, quietly. Tim?Hetherington, a British photographer and co-director of the Afghanistan war documentary “Restrepo,” was killed on Wednesday in Misurata, Libya, when he and others came under fire. Killed with him was Chris Hondros, another good friend and photographer.

They were part of an intimate, informal group of photojournalists who routinely cover war. We are mostly Europeans and Americans, primarily based in New York or Paris, typically working for a handful of magazines and newspapers or photo agencies. The group is small enough — fewer than 100 people — that we refer to each other in conversation by first names only: Yuri, Carolyn, Gary, Spencer, Franco. Of course there are many other such photographers, separated from our group by language or geography.

Though it was unspoken among us, I often mused silently on our group’s extraordinary luck. We covered nearly a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan without losing a single member (though Martin Adler, a Swedish photographer and cameraman who sometimes worked with members of our group, was killed in Somalia in 2006 when a gunman stepped out of a crowd and shot him). Somehow we were spared.

We are not thrill seekers. Each photographer judges the risks necessary to help bring news of these conflicts to the international public.

Six months ago, our group’s luck ran out. First, a land mine destroyed Joao’s legs while he was on patrol with American soldiers in Afghanistan. Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario were held captive with two other journalists and brutalized last month in Libya. And Wednesday morning in Misurata, the incoming fire claimed the lives of Tim and Chris.

Our group is devastated. But talking with other photographers, I’m struck that I have not heard anyone say, “They should not have gone.”

Tim and Chris had experienced hundreds of days of combat; they knew the risks as well as anyone. Yet their commitment was absolute. They endangered themselves so that others might see what was happening in a small port city on the coast of North Africa, a city few had heard of until they showed it to us, until it claimed their lives.