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Chris Hondros |
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March 16th - April 12th, 2004 |
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Artist Statement |
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War photographers and the public alike can become all too easily inured to images of devastation and suffering, but I think even the most jaded could not fail to be jarred by the carnage that happened in Liberia in the summer of 2003. A series of long-simmering skirmishes escalated unexpectedly into a desperate battle for control of the capital city, Monrovia, where most of Liberia's population had fled. The US sent a detachment of Marines to intervene, but politics and a reluctance to make a first move kept the troops from deploying during the fighting. Without this intervention, Liberia's rebel and government militia troops fought toe-to-toe in the capital for weeks, killing dozens every day, while thousands of Marines sat off shore and the world looked on in horror. The chaos and despair was acute for the journalists covering the conflict as well, because we all shared the Liberians' experience. Unlike most war zones, there were no safe havens: stray bullets zinged and deadly mortars fell indiscriminately, indifferent to whether they landed on a miserable refugee camp, the US embassy compound, or the press hotel. Sharing the fear and terror of the Liberians was important to creating an empathetic and intimate report of what it was like to live in such madness. |
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About the Artist |
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Chris Hondros was born in 1970 in New York to immigrant Greek and German parents, and grew up in North Carolina. After receiving a degree in English Literature at North Carolina State and conducting his graduate work in photojournalism at Ohio University's lauded School of Visual Communications, Hondros moved to New York and began to concentrate on international reportage. In 2001 he was awarded a fellowship at at Johns Hopkins' Pew Center for International Journalism in Washington DC, documenting the results of large-scale oil and gas drilling in Nigeria, and he was the recipient of the 1999 US Agency for International Development Photojournalism Grant for his work in Kosovo. His career in photojournalism has taken him to most of the major conflict zones of the past five years, including Kosovo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the West Bank, Iraq, and Liberia. He lives in New York City, where he is a staff photographer for Getty Images News Service. |
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This event was curated by Michelle Jackson The photography series is curated by James Price and Anna Van Lenten
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Previous exhibitions at The Half King
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