‘He could create beauty out of horror’: the extraordinary life and photography of Tim Hetherington

Tim Hetherington used to get so hung up about time. This was his issue on every photography assignment, his main bone of contention: how much time did he have? He could never understand why a writer was allowed a full hour with a subject while the photographer had to shoot around the edges, grabbing 10 minutes here and there. “Hold on, hold on,” he would say, whenever I dared hurry him. He had important work to be doing. He absolutely refused to be rushed.

Tim and I were colleagues back in the late 1990s when we were both at the Big Issue magazine. The editorial office was like a dysfunctional family: everyone fighting their corner and mostly learning on the job. For some of us, it was home, but Tim was only passing through, bound for wilder places and greater glories. He joined rebel convoys in west Africa, bunked alongside GIs in Afghanistan and chronicled the first green shoots of the Arab Spring. He won a quartet of World Press Photo awards and earned an Oscar nomination for Restrepo, the war documentary he made with US author Sebastian Junger, drawing on their 15 months embedded in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. On assignment, his approach was methodical and deliberate. In life, he went at things full-speed. It was as if he was running to his own internal stopwatch, subconsciously aware that he had to make the most of each moment.

The pictures are nuanced and empathetic, finding unconventional routes through the carnage

Now along comes Storyteller to put a further twist in the timeline by stitching Hetherington into history. This bumper exhibition, at the Imperial War Museum in London, features his photographs and films, his journals and cameras. Tim’s pictures tell us vivid stories about men and women on the frontline. But indirectly, implicitly, they tell us his story as well. The retrospective leads the visitor remorselessly, step-by-step, from his early work in Liberia, through to Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, all the way up to his final days in Misrata, covering the Libyan civil war.

The stereotype of the war photographer is of a thrill-seeker, a loose cannon, babbling on the sidelines like a demented Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. But Tim wasn’t like that. He was serious and idealistic, diligent and principled. He came to conflict via humanitarian work and this shows in his pictures, which are more interested in military software than hardware, fascinated by the human cogs in the machine and the relationships between them. So he’s drawn to what might otherwise be dismissed as small details: the knackered young rebel with his hand grenade on the counter; the bullet-headed captain who cradles a small dog he’s adopted; the bored soldiers wrestling on the floor of the barracks. The pictures in Storyteller are nuanced and empathic. Time and again, they find unconventional routes through the carnage.

“That’s why so many photographers have been influenced by him,” says show curator Greg Brockett. “If you talk to people in the industry, they all know his work and think it’s great. When you talk to the general public, they’ve never heard of him. So hopefully this introduces him to a wider audience, as a communicator, an interpreter – someone who looks at conflict in visually impactful ways but who talks about it in ways they never would have expected.”

Typically, tellingly, Tim worked at his own pace. At a time (the early 00s) when most photojournalists were crossing to digital, he shot colour negative film on an analogue camera: 10 frames on each roll. This forced him to think carefully about each composition, lifted him out of the frantic news cycle and nudged him towards such long-term themed projects as his sensual Sleeping Soldiers series, , with its elegant framing of servicemen at rest. Tim liked circling back to revisit people and locations. Best of all, he liked immersing himself within a group dynamic. Embedded alongside Junger in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the pair condensed hundreds of hours of footage to make Restrepo, named after the platoon medic who was killed early in the tour.

Today Tim has been typecast. The frontline is his legacy. The photographer Stephen Mayes, executive director of the Tim Hetherington Trust, has mixed feelings about that. “Tim has now reached the point where he’s turned from memory to history,” Mayes says. “History will selectively view us as it wishes and there’s nothing we can do about that. But I think he’d be appalled to be represented as a war photographer. That’s not how he defined himself. The human characteristics he was interested in revealed themselves most strongly in times of conflict. But his subject wasn’t war. It was more profound: it was people.”

I speak to James Brabazon, the frontline journalist who worked with Tim in Liberia. Brabazon recalls their experiences in 2003, covering the Lurd rebel advance on the capital, Monrovia. Bullets flying. Casualties left and right. He says that 80% of war reporting is logistics. It’s about staying hydrated, keeping safe, moving between locations, resting when you can. The risk, after all that, is that you’re too exhausted to pay attention to the story. To focus on the human beings. To remember why you’re even there.

“To be honest,” he says, “I’ve found it a drag, having to be interested in other people. I want to say, ‘Please, just let me be alone in my hell.’ But Tim was always super-engaged. His curiosity and humanity persisted through it all – however intense it had been, however traumatised he was. And they deeply affected him, the events that he witnessed. He carried deep psychological harm for the rest of his life. But somehow, he could then turn around and create beauty out of horror. He could immediately sit down with someone and capture the essence of humanity that somehow existed outside the architecture of war.”

He didn’t know where he was going – I knew him for 15 years and he was all about the journey

On 20 April 2011, Tim was filming inside the besieged city of Misrata when the rebel army was shelled by Gaddafi’s government forces. His femoral artery was cut by a small piece of shrapnel. He bled out in the van, a few minutes from hospital.

“It’s difficult,” says Brabazon. “I’ve spent years trying not to think about it. I wish I’d been there. I wish I’d been with him. Sebastian feels the same. We both operate under the strong delusion – or certainty, depending on our mood – that Tim would still be alive if we were with him that day.”

Tim’s death still feels strange. It leaves the man fixed in time, forever 40 years old, as much a piece of history these days as his Arab Spring pictures. It also prompts others to speak on his behalf. The unfinished Libya work is flash-lit, hyperreal and contains an element of performance. Tim had started taking pictures of photographers taking pictures. He seemed fascinated by the feedback loop of warfare, the way in which one image of conflict influences another. Brockett thinks that this may have been his next direction: a project focused on the theatre of war. Ultimately, there is no way of knowing.

Tim’s closest friends like to joke that their two most dreaded words are “Tim would”. Tim would have thought this, Tim would have done that. The point is that it is ridiculous, says Mayes, because nobody has a clue. “Even Tim didn’t know. Tim didn’t fully know who he was. He didn’t know where he was going. I knew him for 15 years and he was all about the journey.”

By 2011, thinks Mayes, Tim had largely fulfilled his agenda. “He’d explored the world. He’d explored multimedia. He had recognition, an audience, an Oscar nomination. The tragedy was that he was cut off with a full stop at the end of a sentence. He was about to start the next sentence. Nobody knows what it would have been.”

Just before his death, Tim produced a 19-minute documentary called Diary. It’s a fine piece of work: a freeform, abstract audit of 10 years of war reporting, cross-cutting between rainwashed African roads and bustling London streets, dropping us without preamble into the aftermath of a massacre in eastern Chad. Tim has come to record the remains: the broken pots, the burnt corn-cobs and the charred human-shaped shadow laid out on the grass.

“Hold on, just hold on,” he tells the African guide who tries to move him along – and there it is, like a seance, our photographer from the past. Bold and brilliant, authoritative and exasperating. He was constantly demanding more time, the awkward bastard. There were always so many things that he wanted to do.

Martina Navratilova releases statement as tennis icon pulls out of working at WTA Finals

Martina Navratilova will boycott the WTA Finals after the decision was made to host the competition in Saudi Arabia. The tennis icon has been an outspoken voice against the WTA's agreement with the gulf nation.

Saudi Arabia has signed a deal to host the season-ending event from 2024 to 2026. Women's rights in Saudi have been a controversial topic, and Navratilova has spoken out against the country hosting such a high-profile women's event.he 67-year-old has questioned the players' decision to play in Saudi Arabia. She has told players who claim they do not want to engage in the politics of the move that playing in Saudi Arabia is inherently political.

Speaking at the preview to the 25th Laureus World Sports Awards, Navratilova was asked if she would work as a pundit at the WTA Finals. The 18-time Grand Slam champion responded: "I'm not planning on that.

Navratilova has been joined by Chris Evert in condemning hosting the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia. She believes the idea that change can be enabled is "egotistical".

Martina Navratilova© Getty

She continued: "We're going to Saudi Arabia which is about as big a change as you can make except for maybe going to North Korea. Chris Evert and I have made our views clear on that, but the players have made their choices.

"One of the comments I heard, one of the players said they 'don't want to be political'. Going to Saudi is about as political as you can get. Welcome to sport. Sports is political.

"Sport has been at the forefront of social change. I don't see how anything happens there without the blessing of MBS (Mohammed bin Salman). He decides what goes and what doesn't.

"We're a bit egotistical to think we can make a difference but who knows. Maybe this is a good thing, we'll see how this goes. The players have to honour that, they're the ones competing. We're not affected by it. We're not going there to play."

Saudi Arabia's involvement in sport has grown over the last decade in a move that critics believe 'sportswashes' the country's poor human rights record.

World No. 9 Ons Jabeur was one of the first WTA players to defend a move to Saudi Arabia. Speaking in March, the Tunisian said: "I think I'm the first player who would be supportive of going to Saudi.

"The country is evolving. I know that other people have a different opinion, which is normal, but I've been there a couple of times and I've seen how amazing people are, how women are getting more and more rights. As a female tennis player, I feel it's time to go there, it's time to give the opportunity to women who dream of being tennis players."

Oregon DB Daylen Austin arrested and charged with felony over fatal accident

Oregon defensive back Daylen Austin has reportedly been arrested and charged with a felony for his alleged involvement in a fatal hit and run accident in Eugene that occurred on Monday night.

The accident in question, per the Eugene Police Department, happened on Monday around 9:10 p.m. No information has been released yet, but "hit and run with a vehicle" is a Class C felony in Oregon, which carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and fines that can reach up to $125K. 

If there is a fatality, per Short Law Group in Oregon, the driver can face a Class B felony, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $250K, or both.

“This is a complex investigation and EPD is still gathering informati0on to be submitted to the Lane County District Attorney’s Office for a final charging decision,” a Eugene Police Department spokesperson told Crepea.

A spokesperson from Oregon also commented, saying, “We are aware of the incident and are awaiting additional information."

Austin was a redshirt freshman for Oregon last season who only appeared in three games, making three tackles with one pass breakup. He's a former four-star recruit. 

El Salvador's Bukele releases father of soccer player from prison after son's plea on social media

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele released the father of a Salvadoran soccer player from prison after the athlete published a plea for his release on social media, authorities confirmed on Wednesday.

Marcelo “El Chiky” Díaz, who plays for El Salvador's national team, on Tuesday published a letter on X, formerly Twitter, saying his father was wrongfully arrested by police as a suspected gang member on the way to see him play on March 30. Díaz pleaded directly to Bukele, who has a firm clench on power after being reelected in February despite a constitutional ban on reelection.

The arrest of Díaz's father is part of a larger gang crackdown in the Central American nation that has gained Bukele a soaring popularity but has also fueled accusations of mass human rights abuses.

Following a wave of gang violence two years ago, Bukele in March 2022 announced a “state of emergency,” suspending many key constitutional rights and locking up nearly 80,000 people — more than 1% of the El Salvador's population — the government said were suspected as being part of a gang.

People are often arrested with little evidence of gang ties and locked up in prisons likened to torture chambers with little access to due process. In January, Bukele's vice president Félix Ulloa told the Associated Press that the government had “made mistakes” in arresting people who committed no crimes. He said around 7,000 people arrested under the state of emergency had since been released from prisons.

Relatives often go years without seeing their loved ones, but on Wednesday — one day after the soccer player posted the letter on social media — authorities confirmed his father was set free.

“Thanks to everyone, but mainly to God for being a God of justice," Díaz wrote Wednesday on X. “My father is home. He is well, he is healthy, he has been well treated. My solidarity with all the families who are going through similar situations.”

While authorities issued no statement on the release, the incident appears to fall in line with Bukele's larger strategy as he seeks recognition on an international level.

While he has been heavily criticized by human rights groups and other international leaders, the self-described “world's coolest dictator” has harnessed social media to speak to his base. He has turned to celebrities, sports and entertainment events in what experts and critics say is an attempt to change the narrative about his presidency.