Here I Am

January 7, 2013
To begin this compelling account of Tim Hetherington’s harrowing life as a photojournalist, journalist Huffman (Sultana) sketches the scene of his death, which came while covering the 2011 Libyan uprising. Bleeding from a mortar wound to his leg, “propped against ammunition boxes” in a makeshift ambulance, Hetherington (1970–2011) died under the scrutiny of cameras close enough “to pick up the stubble on his chin.” As a war photographer, Hetherington captured the subtle as well as the frantic—commonly switching from digital to film for a more intimate effect—on warfronts from Liberia to Sri Lanka. Huffman details Hetherington’s early career, friendships and experiences with rebels in Africa, and influences and aesthetic struggles. These set the stage for his years in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley working on the documentary Restrepo with Sebastian Junger, which earned an Academy Award nomination. Huffman glowingly propounds that “ footage and photos in the Korengal would be... among the best produced by any photographer in any war.” It’s this larger-than-life persona that enters Libya in the book’s second half. Following the frenetic group of photographers Hetherington took up with in Misrata, Huffman offers perspectives from firsthand sources to unveil the heroism and errors of his final days. Agent: Patricia Moosbrugger Literary Agency.

January 1, 2013
A biography of war correspondent Tim Hetherington (1970-2011), who died during a firefight in Libya while documenting the revolution there. Huffman (Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History, 2009, etc.) recounts the career arc of British-born and -educated Hetherington while simultaneously providing insights into the mentality of war photographers during the past century. Hetherington seemed to win trust wherever he traveled and with whomever he collaborated professionally. For the most part, he did not parachute into war zones to shoot potentially prizewinning photographs and then depart quickly. Instead, he remained to document long-term problems as well as personally assist the victims of war. That characteristic became evident most prominently in the West African nation of Liberia, where Hetherington returned year after year to track war criminals and solidify relationships with rebel leaders. To casual observers, Hetherington seemed fearless, but to those who knew him well, he admitted to being frightened in a variety of dangerous situations. In the words of Sebastian Junger, Hetherington was a "bright spirit drawn to dark places." Huffman also chronicles the Hetherington-Junger collaboration on the documentary film Restrepo, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Like so much of Hetherington's other visual projects, Restrepo delved deeply into the relationship between young men and war. Though he could have settled in England or the United States or other relatively peaceful locales after making his mark as an artistic war photographer, Hetherington chose to continue to travel to dangerous locales, worrying his family and friends while also assuaging their concerns with his sunny nature. A first-rate biographical portrait that also deserves accolades for its insights into the minds of adventure-seeking photographers.

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February 15, 2013
In April 2011, Hetherington, 40, was killed in a mortar attack while covering the Arab Spring uprising in Misrata, Libya. Hetherington, likely best known for codirecting the Academy Awardnominated documentary Restrepo, about the Afghanistan war, spent eight years as a war photographer covering conflicts from Africa to South Asia. But, as Huffman documents, Hetherington went way beyond photographing the carnage and violence of war to detail the lives of the people affected. He tended to immerse himself in the local life and culture, covering a school choir of blind children in Sierra Leone and spending three years helping the UN track down human-rights criminals in Liberia. Oxford-educated Hetherington used photos, videos, and written narratives to chronicle the lives of people in war-torn areas. Huffman details the life of a man who wasn't satisfied to record images but wanted to understand the causes behind the war, the histories of conflict, and the individualsmany, adolescentscaught in the horror and drama of war. Through Hetherington's extraordinary life, Huffman explores a dangerous profession and how one man pursued it with his own personal twist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)