Tim Hetherington: Infidel, PhotoFusion - exhibition review

This moving exhibition of work by the late British photojournalist and film-maker Tim Hetherington — killed in Libya in 2011 — approaches the subject of war from a documentary angle, defying the horrors and introducing a rare sensitivity.

In 2007 he went to live with a US platoon in Afghanistan’s remote and deadly Korengal Valley and documented their daily activities. The closest reference to action is a picture of a soldier scouring the mountains from behind bushes. Instead the photographs explore the men’s close relationships, epitomised by the shot of three soldiers wrestling. Outside, a circle of them dig soil for sandbags against a dramatic backdrop of a steep mountain valley. In one striking image Hetherington shows a soldier incongruously practising golf swings on the mountainside, while another picture shows a wretched man returning from a day’s battle. The latter’s title, Restrepo, pays homage to Doctor Juan Restrepo, killed in 2007.