Discussion Topic: Tim Hetherington and Modern-day War Photography

I believe that Hetherington wanted to show the human side of the soldiers, as well as the human side of war in general. About the movie, I believe they just want to show the soldiers as heroes. That’s something I’ve noticed here in the USA: every single soldier is a hero. It doesn’t matter if he succeeded in his mission, if he failed, if he killed many innocent people or anything, and if the soldier dies, then it becomes a more important hero automatically. I believe that this hero status is what drives young people to join the army most of the time, and since heroes have been portrayed in many pictures and movies, the kids just want to be like that. It’s interesting that this photographer actually noticed that type of behavior in the soldiers he work with. However, I believe that it’s just a roll they try to accomplish, that they want to recreate in the battlefields so everybody is proud. In the pictures of the sleeping soldiers, we can see them as regular people, as vulnerable young man, in other words: as humans. They are no longer those heroes that risk the life for this amazing nation, they are just one of us. I’m not sure if Hetherington’s intention was to make photographs of heros, but I believe it wasn’t.