But it also means we can't afford to come up short when it comes to scratching together the funds it takes to keep our team firing on all cylinders, and the truth is, we finished our budgeting cycle on June 30 about $100,000 short of our online goal. We've never been very good at being conservative.Īnd usually, that serves us well in doing the ambitious, hard-hitting journalism that you turn to Mother Jones for. And more than 150 Iraqi journalists lost their lives covering war on their home turf.īy signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from Mother Jones and our partners. Among those killed in the bloody Central American wars of the ’70s and ’80s, El Salvador claimed John Hoagland, father of Eros Hoagland, who followed in his father’s footsteps and is included in Photojournalists On War. Vietnam took Robert Capa, Larry Burrows, Sean Flynn and dozens more. Then again, every war has its journalist casualties.

Since Kamber’s book came out, the photo world-hell, all of us-have lost Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington, two of the best photojournalists of our era, if not of all time. Ill-defined conflicts such as Libya and Syria are exceptionally dangerous to cover. It’s a point that’s brought up repeatedly. It’s notable how much war, and covering wars, has changed since the invasion of Iraq. May 27, 2003: An Iraqi child jumps over Shi’ite remains discovered in a mass grave south of Baghdad and brought to a school for identification. Others focus on a specific photo, relationships with subjects, or how covering the war affected a particular photographer. Some interviews go meta, discussing the state of photojournalism and war photography. By so doing, he gives us a peek under the hood of what it’s like to be a photojournalist in Iraq. Kamber, who shot in Iraq for the New York Times, interviews photographers from across the spectrum-wire photographers, those shooting on contract for magazines and newspapers, the rare staffer, Iraqi photographers, and plenty of freelancers. The book shows, from embedded and unembedded perspectives, the differences this policy made. In Iraq, the US government instituted the highly controlled system of embedding. In Vietnam, it was relatively easy to show up and ride a military chopper to and from the front lines, with nearly unfettered access to the troops. The concept of Photojournalists On War, which was published in May, belies one of the key differences between the two wars.

For a number of reasons-cable news, Twitter, war fatigue, iPhones, reality TV, etc.-professional photojournalists may never again effect the public’s perception of war the way they did in Vietnam. When photojournalists talk about making images that inform, foment change, make an impact, this is what they’re talking about. It’s hard to understate the impact photography had on the Vietnam War. The book’s 300-plus photos, all from the AP archives, fill in the moments between the Pulitzer-winning images. Vietnam: the Real War, a Photographic History by the Associated Press tells this familiar but still compelling story in rich, visual detail, providing a thorough look at the daily life of US and South Vietnamese soldiers in the jungles and rice paddies, and on city streets. Horst Faas/AP Photoįor every Vietnam War image seared into our memory, there are thousands more, documenting our two-decade slog through an ultimately unwinnable conflict. January 1965: Vietnamese and US troops rest after a tense night awaiting a Viet Cong ambush near the village of Binh Gia.

Real war photos