The Tim Hetherington collection and conflict imagery research network launch

The first network event, in partnership with the Imperial War Museum, discusses Tim Hetherington's work as a conflict photographer with an expert panel of guest speakers.

The Tim Hetherington collection is based at the Imperial War Museum, and the research network aims to explore Hetherington’s approach to recording conflict and to examine his legacy in the broader historical context of conflict imagery. For the first network event, we focus on the visual tropes of war, including the idea of the ‘feedback loop’ which Hetherington spoke about, where soldiers co-opt popular culture into their own self-representations. Our expert speakers will discuss issues such as military masculinity, picturing injury, and the appeal of animals in combat imagery.

Tim Hetherington is best known as an award-winning conflict photographer, including four World Press Photo awards. In 2010, he was also nominated for an Academy Award for Restrepo (with Sebastian Junger), a feature-length documentary that chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley.

Register for this free event via Eventbrite. 

The network’s principal investigator is Dr Katy Parry (Associate Professor in Media and Communication), working with co-investigator, Greg Brockett (curator, Imperial War Museum).

Speakers include:

Suzannah Biernoff, “Flesh, stone, metal: the seductions of antiquity” | Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art at Birkbeck

Max Houghton, “Restrepo: Locating the Self” | Senior Lecturer in Photography at London College of Communication

Paul Lowe, “Cats and Dogs: military representations of animals in combat” | Reader in Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, award-winning photographer

Saumava Mitra, “Revisiting Restrepo: the men and boys beyond the wire” | Assistant Professor at Dublin City University

Amru Salahuddien, “Individualism of the combatants” | Photojournalist covering the Middle East and Canada for international news agencies

Organised by the Imperial War Museum and University of Leeds. This event is supported by funding from the AHRC (Grant ref: AH/T008210/1).

Please contact Katy if you would like to be kept informed about the network (k.j.parry@leeds.ac.uk).

Image: ‘Portrait of Tim Hetherington whilst embedded with 2nd Platoon, Battle Company, 2nd Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade troops in the Korengal Valley, September 2007 © IWM (DC 47747)’