War photographer Tim Hetherington was a pro. He cut his teeth in the civil wars in Liberia, then followed the world's "trail of tears" to tsunami-stricken Sri Lanka, Darfur, Algeria, the U.S. army Restrepo outpost in Afghanistan and, finally, to the 2009 revolution in Libya--where, camera in hand, he was killed by Muammar Gaddafi's troops in the streets of Misrata.
In Here I Am, historian and journalist Alan Huffman (Mississippi in Africa) traces Hetherington's life from his student days in Cardiff ("he was tall, good-looking, affable, had a keen sense of humor, could party with the best of them, and sported a mass of long dreadlocks") to his last day, which he described in an e-mail just a few hours before the mortar attack that killed him: "Crazy day today. Full on city fight. It's an incredible story... and hardly anyone here."
Huffman's biography crackles with the authenticity of his own experience in Liberia and interviews with Hetherington and his colleagues, especially Sebastian Junger, his collaborator on the Academy Award-nominated documentary Restrepo. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an adrenaline-fueled war photographer, but also of a dedicated professional and humanitarian "intent on making connections across the void... to explain the world to the world through vivid and telling imagery." The impact of Hetherington's carefully chosen images will long outlast the fleeting amateur phone snaps from whatever conflict is trending on Twitter. --Bruce Jacobs