Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? is a new film by Sebastian Junger charting the life of photographer Tim Hetherington.
On April 20,
2011, shortly after the release of his documentary RESTREPO – and only six weeks after attending the Oscar ceremony as a nominee – photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington was killed by mortar fire in the city of Misrata, Libya, where he”d been covering the civil war. He bled out in the back of a pick-up truck while being raced to the hospital, comforted by a Spanish photojournalist who was holding his hand and trying to keep him awake. Those moments ended a brilliant ten-year career in which Hetherington not only covered such dramatic frontline stories as Liberia and Afghanistan, but also transcended the conventional boundaries of image-making to become one of the most important journalists of his generation.
You can find out more about the film here along with extra resources here.
Remembering Tim is a website set up by his parents, Judith and Alistair Hetherington – http://www.timhetherington.org/
I was recently invited to participate in a project called Early Works, conceived by Photo Lucida.
Here is the text for my selected photograph (seen above):
It’s 1979 and a weekend trip to visit my grandparents on the south coast of Britain. The location for our Sunday outing is the Arundel Wildfowl Centre, described as a “haven for wildlife in a picture-book setting in West Sussex, bordered by the River Arun”. It doesn’t look particularly picturesque in this photograph.
There’s my grandfather wearing a hat and brown suede jacket. I can’t tell for sure, but I’ll bet he’s also wearing a shirt and tie. He was always immaculately turned out, even after he retired from his job in the bank. Around his neck hangs a leather case containing a pair of binoculars. He’s not looking at the birds, but at me (and you), with a slightly austere, quizzical expression. Although I’ve cut his left leg off, it’s a pretty well composed photograph for a five-year-old. My brother features prominently in the centre of the frame, wrapped up on this winter’s morning in a padded red coat and blue cord trousers. The colours of his clothes have faded little in the years since the print was made, in contrast to the bleached autumnal hues of the trees and slight yellowing around the rim of the photograph.
My parents crouch either side of my younger sibling. Mum appears to be helping him feed scraps of bread to the geese, while Dad’s attention is focused on his camera. It’s possible he’s just loaded a new roll of Kodachrome 64 – his film of choice – or that he’s fiddling with the exposure. He was a keen amateur photographer and his passion for the medium certainly rubbed off on me.
At first glance the photograph represents an ordinary middle-class family scene, but on closer inspection an element of tension appears under the surface. Is one of the geese about to peck my little brother? There’s a good chance I took this photograph hoping that would be the case! I didn’t like my brother much in these early years. He was born on my second birthday, thereby competing for my parents’ attention and subjecting me to a childhood of shared celebrations.
It’s strange looking at the picture now, in the age of Instagram and camera apps, which re-create the nostalgic feel of ‘old photographs’ – using elements such as the square format, rounded edges and tinted colours as seen in this thirty year-old print. The photograph has an almost contemporary feel.
Jemima and the cross, Brighton, 13 March 2013 © Simon Roberts
This photograph of my daughter was taken for the project Someone I Know, conceived and curated by Stuart Pilkington it brings together newly produced portraits taken by over 100 photographers around the world.
The brief for the photographers was to take a portrait of someone they know, no matter how loosely. And the results were published on the site on 2nd April 2013. See the results on the project website: http://someoneiknow.net/
And here’s the project facebook page- https://www.facebook.com/someoneiknowproject?ref=ts&fref=ts
Prints from We English and XXX Olympiad on show at Somerset House as part of the Landmark exhibition. More information about the show here and additional installation shots on Flowers Gallery website here.
Copies of The Election Project newspaper are currently available for free at Flowers Gallery in London during the Top UK Casinos run of the exhibition Nicola Green – In Seven Days…. / Simon Roberts – The Election Project.
Fuck off snow.
Image: Installing framed prints by Seba Kurtis at Darley Mills © Bert Dankaert
Check out our POC Collective exhibition currently on show as part of the Format Festival in Derby. More information here.
Protest signs from Let This Be A Sign installed in Derby’s Silk Mill, March 2013, as part of Format Festival.
Photograph: Nigel Farage, UK Independence Party, Buckingham, 5th May 2010 © Simon Roberts, from The Election Project
After UKIP’s surge in the polls in the Eastleigh byelection this week, Andrew Rawnsley writes in today’s Observer “Nigel Farage is the ebullient face on a rackety gang which attracts some very strange characters and is riddled with faction-fighting. Its policy prospectus would be torn to shreds if anything like it was ever offered by any of the main parties. Ukip’s literature in Eastleigh promised tax cuts for “everyone” and more spending on everything from the restoration of student grants to more generous pensions to more prisons. It must be the only party to be led by people who still believe in Santa Claus.”
My Election Project series can currently be seen on the wall at Flowers Gallery in London.