From May to mid-June, Times reporter Patrick McDonnell stayed at the Rixos Hotel, home to the foreign press, reporting on the Libyan civil war. In the waning days of Moammar Kadafi’s rule, the hotel was the surreal stage for a daily drama pitting edgy journalists against regime information managers.
Photo: Journalists sit it out in a hallway as gun battles continue around the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli, Libya. Credit: Dario Lopez-Mills / Associated Press
From Sebastian’s paean:
You and I were always talking about risk because she was the beautiful woman we were both in love with, right? The one who made us feel the most special, the most alive? We were always trying to have one more dance with her without paying the price. All those quiet, huddled conversations we had in Afghanistan: Where to walk on the patrols, what to do if the outpost gets overrun, what kind of body armor to wear. You were so smart about it, too—so smart about it that I would actually tease you about being scared. Of course you were scared—you were terrified. We both were. We were terrified and we were in love, and in the end, you were the one she chose.
The Perfect Storm author and Vanity Fair contributing editor Sebastian Junger remembers his friend and Restrepo co-creator, Tim Hetherington.
Photograph © Tim Hetherington.
Tim Hetherington’s Diary, a film he made after ten years of war reporting. Hetherington’s reported to have been killed today in Libya.
‘Diary’ is a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of reporting. It’s a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media.
Tim Hetherington
