Editor's Note

By Clem Work

In tribute to American photojournalist Chris Hondros, 41, who died in Misrata, Libya, on April 20 after being struck by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade, South African photojournalist Nic Bothma wrote on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ website: “It is said that photographers are the ones that go to the back of a cave with a torch and return to tell the rest of the tribe what is there. If not for your bravery, your willingness to venture to the depths of these caves, and your relentless pursuit of the truth and reality of war, so many would never see its wretched face. In bringing these images to the minds of people around the world you made a difference, expanded awareness, and brought about change.”

The staff of Montana Journalism Review 2011 dedicates this issue on foreign reporting to Hondros, who was freelancing for Getty Images, and to two other extraordinary photojournalists, both British citizens, who ventured to the back of the cave. Only one of them returned. Freelancer Tim Hetherington, 41, was mortally wounded in the same attack in Libya that killed Hondros. Giles Duley, 39, lost three limbs to an explosive device on Feb. 7, while embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.

All three were at the top of their game. All had, as one commenter to the New York Times’ Lens blog said, “the eye of an artist, the responsibility of a journalist, and the raw courage of an infantryman.” Hondros was a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist for "his powerful and courageous coverage of the bloody upheaval in Liberia" and won the 2005 Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club of Americafor an unforgettable series detailing the shooting of an Iraqi family by U.S. troops. Hetherington was a creative genius straining at the bounds of still photography. Two months earlier he attended the Academy Awards as a nominated director of the Afghanistan war documentary “Restrepo.” Duley, who started out as a fashion photographer, followed his heart to humanitarian photography for Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations and had been widely published.

Hondros and Hetherington were among 16 journalists killed so far in 2011, 12 in their home countries, 10 in North Africa and the Middle East. All gave their lives to illustrate, as one man on Duley’s blog said, “ the unity, tragedy and potential of the human condition." We at MJR stand in awe of their courage and sacrifice.

Note: As we were going to press, the New York Times and NPR ran stories on war photographers.