Congratulations to UK photographer Tim Hetherington, whose colour image of an American soldier resting in a bunker in Afghanistan has won the 2007 World Press Photo Prize. It is a picture that captures, as jury chair Gary Knight of VII notes “”the exhaustion of a man – and the exhaustion of a nation.”
On his web site, he says “I’m currently in New York recuperating after an accident in Afghanistan.” He was in the country on assignment for ‘Vanity Fair‘, where there is also a slide show of 15 of his portraits of soldiers and another of 15 images from the Korengal Valley – the winning image is the final picture of this. There is also a video discussion between Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, the writer of the feature.
You can also see it and all the other winners on the World Press Photo 2008 pages, which will be occupying me for some time.