vrijdag, oktober 03, 2003
Our experience as photojournalists is usually helpful, but in Iraq we were the targets. Unilateral journalists like me had rented SUVs in Kuwait and were traveling into Iraq together and were just four days into the assignment when Iraqis caught us up in an ambush. I was unilateral for only four days. We had no idea how bad the security situation was going to be. The American forces at that time sent us back to Kuwait. I was embedded with American troops and went back into Iraq with the relative safety of the U.S. Marines.
The images after the war were, in many ways, more shocking than the ones taken during the fighting. The hardest, most difficult thing to see was the hospital in Baghdad. It was just full of injured people.
Almost every family had a loved one who had been kidnapped by the Baathist Regime. Almost everybody was happy to see Saddam go, but I am not sure if every Iraqi was happy to have America there. Liberia was different from Iraq because unlike the Iraqis, everybody in Liberia wanted the Americans to come in and help.
You shoot these things not just to see what is happening there, but to see what is in the people's hearts. You see some terrible things doing this type of work, but you also get to see the utter joy of the people, after the fighting is over. I try and believe in what we're doing here because we shed a little light onto dark places and somebody has got to do it.
Chris Hondros, Getty Images staff photographer.
The images after the war were, in many ways, more shocking than the ones taken during the fighting. The hardest, most difficult thing to see was the hospital in Baghdad. It was just full of injured people.
Almost every family had a loved one who had been kidnapped by the Baathist Regime. Almost everybody was happy to see Saddam go, but I am not sure if every Iraqi was happy to have America there. Liberia was different from Iraq because unlike the Iraqis, everybody in Liberia wanted the Americans to come in and help.
You shoot these things not just to see what is happening there, but to see what is in the people's hearts. You see some terrible things doing this type of work, but you also get to see the utter joy of the people, after the fighting is over. I try and believe in what we're doing here because we shed a little light onto dark places and somebody has got to do it.
Chris Hondros, Getty Images staff photographer.
# posted by Jan-Edward : 20:58
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