Last Photographs | Ashley Gilbertson

Ashley Gilbertson is a freelance photographer who's been taking pictures of conflict and displacement for years, since 2002 in Iraq. He has a book coming out called "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot", a photographer's chronicle of Iraq.
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Last Photographs
Ashley Gilbertson
with Joanna Gilbertson

Baghdad, March 2007

I didn’t want to go back.

When I began reporting from Iraq in 2002, I was still a wild and somewhat naïve twenty-four-year-old kid. Five years later, I was battle-weary. I had been there longer than the American military and had kept returning long after most members of the “coalition of the willing” had pulled out. Iraq had become my initiation, my rite of passage, but instead of granting me a new sense of myself and a new identity, Iraq had become my identity. Without Iraq, I was nothing. Just another photographer hanging around New York. In Iraq, I had a purpose, a mission; I felt important. I didn’t want to go back, but I needed to—and for the worst possible reason: I wasn’t ready for it to end. After twelve months away, I had a craving that only Iraq could satisfy.

My wife didn’t like the idea. Neither did my shrink. “If you go back to Iraq now,” he warned, “you’ll probably keep going back.” To be completely honest—and I wasn’t being honest with myself then—part of me knew they were right. Still, I could easily rationalize my desire to anyone who asked. I told them that I wanted to have one last look, that I needed to shoot the place differently, outside the constraints of daily coverage; I said I wanted to photograph Iraq emotionally, to react to my feelings on the spot instead of bottling them up as I’d done in the past; I said I wanted to be sure that my book of war photographs was indeed finished, that the story had irrevocably turned. The only people who bought my justifications were my editors at the New York Times. They thought another rotation was a great idea.

More.
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Thanks Boingboing.

Here's an NPR interview.
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