The Perilous Job of Conflict Photography

NPR has posted their story based around the memorial service for Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros. In it, they talked with several other conflict photographers and those who send them into the field.

The Associated Press’ director of photography, Santiago Lyons, talked about how technology has improved the journalism but left the journalists more open to danger:

For photographers, the immediacy of technology also holds true. But it plays out a bit differently. In past eras, they would have returned to bureaus away from combat to send film and photos back to editors in newsrooms. No longer.

“Journalists are able spend more time in harm’s way,” Lyon said. “On the one hand, it speeds up the transmission of information from a conflict area. On the other hand it exposes journalists for a longer amount of time to more danger and thus makes the whole thing more risky.”