Sleeping Soldiers (2009) is the single-screen version of a work made by photographer and director Tim Hetherington who was killed in Misurata, Libya, yesterday while documenting the conflict there. The first version of this work was made in 2007-8 while Hetherington was following a platoon of US Airborne Infantry based in the Korengal Valley of Eastern Afghanistan; an original, three-screen version of the project was exhibited in the New York Photo Festival in 2009. Magali Charrier designed the sound, which is jarring to my civilian ears, but probably not so foreign to the auditory memory of my veteran father.
Even more striking is the way in which Hetherington’s Vimeo page has become an overnight memento mori, serving as a meeting ground for a growing pool of commenters and admirers, most of which never knew him as a person in the world, I am sure. This piece, along with Diary, a video essay on his experiences as a war photographer, were viewed only a handful of times prior to his death—unsurprising, as Vimeo is often used by film and videographers as a third-party host. While there is certainly a bit of crossover between documentary photography and the art market, especially of late, I can’t claim any deep knowledge of whether or how Hetherington’s practice fits into that matrix.
While Facebook is our culture’s virtual go-to for memorializing the dead online, I’m heartened by the ways in which other spaces—one whose social networking capabilities are of secondary use—spontaneously accommodate grieving communities. This page is about Hetherington’s work, after all.
