Iraq: When Killing Becomes Personal [Photo Essay]

By Nina Berman, AlterNet. Posted November 8, 2007.

Freelance photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson has been covering the war on Iraq for major media outlets, including The New York Times since 2003.

He was awarded the Robert Capa award and the National Press Photographer's Association award. His first book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, published by University of Chicago press is the most comprehensive photographic coverage of the war to date. AlterNet and multimedia co-sponsor BAGnewsNotes are pleased to present a multimedia slideshow and an interview with Gilbertson.

Nina Berman: You arrived in Iraq, or actually the northern area of Kurdistan, at the outset of the war. What were your initial feelings as it became clear that the U.S. was going to invade?

Ashley Gilbertson: I'd been to Kurdistan in 2002, to study what type of society the Kurds had built for themselves after having all been refugees at some point in their lives. Listening to their stories -- most recently, betrayal in 1991, and Saddam's chemical attacks -- I was compelled to go back to see how they were treated during the 2003 invasion. I wanted to ensure the Americans and the Iraqis were held accountable for their actions, should it go badly, again. I didn't care what reasons the Americans gave for invading Iraq, all I knew was anything would be better than Saddam. The man was a monster. In retrospect, I think that pro-war stance is visible in my photographs from that time.

Berman: How did your feelings change over time?

Gilbertson: My stance changed dramatically, but not just in regard to the Iraq conflict. In the beginning I felt that war could be justified, ends justifying the means and all that, but after seeing the heart of war, how awful it really is firsthand, I decided war as a whole is the most awful thing anybody could wish for.

Berman: How many months total were you in Iraq and over what time period?

Gilbertson: I worked there for 18 months over a five-year period. Berman: Can you explain the title of the book Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Gilbertson: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is an acronym for What The Fuck. The soldiers say it over the radio a lot, and for years I had no idea what they were talking about. I thought it was just some crazy military speak I didn't need to know about. When I discovered its meaning and thought back to the times I'd heard it used, I immediately decided it was the perfect title for my book.

Berman: Many of the people you photographed in the book were killed -- sometimes the same day you took their picture, as with Specialist Ian Spakosky, aka Spanky; other times, shortly after. Did that possible reality -- alive now, dead a minute later -- become part of your normal frame of mind, and did it affect how you photographed?

Gilbertson: Up until Spanky was killed, death was something abstract. It was always around, I mean, I can't tell you how many bodies I saw, but it was something I could distance myself from. When Spanky died, I became very emotional about it. It became personal. I knew the guy. I knew he'd called his wife the night before, expecting she'd ask for a divorce, and learned that she'd gotten a tattoo of his name over her heart.

That had a profound effect on my work, and continues to today. I'm trying to take pictures that illustrate what I've learned, that we need to celebrate and cherish every moment of our lives; that no matter your religion or politics, death is something that we all share and fear. I shot a story in Vienna that looked at the first and last moments of life. More recently, I've started a project about fallen soldiers and marines.

Berman: For me, a truly creepy moment in the book is when you talk about the snipers and how killing becomes very personal, obsessively so, at a distance. Can you talk about this and your sniper?

Gilbertson: When I was specifically targeted, and it happened only a few times, I'd generally get pissed off. I mean, I'm not firing at anyone. I'm a photographer. We come from a culture where the press is rightly regarded as noncombatants. In Iraq, that's not the case. We're seen as spies, mouthpieces of the government, and, therefore, we're fair game. It's bullshit, but in some regards, I can start to comprehend why Iraqis might think this way. For over 20 years under Saddam, all media was state-sponsored, and today, most of the newspapers have allegiances to a particular sect or political party. With that as your understanding of the media, it must be incredibly difficult to understand much of the American press tries to be independent of religion and politics. Still, it doesn't make it any less infuriating when they try to kill you.

Berman: Journalists' access to this war is largely through the embed process, where photographers and writers are assigned to certain military units and get a very close look at the unit. You describe a moment where you have fallen asleep in the back if a Bradley, tank and afterward the Sgt. said to you that napping in a tank makes you an honorary member of the team because "no one but a grunt could sleep in a Bradley." Did you want to be one of the boys, so to speak? And what is the culture of the combat journalist?

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Nina Berman is a photographer and the author of Purple Hearts: Back From Iraq.

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