British photographer Tim Hetherington is the winner of the World Press Photo 2007 contest.
With a picture of this tired U.S. soldier in Afghanistan published in Vanity Fair.
Contest jury chairman Gary Knight said:
“This image shows the exhaustion of a man and the exhaustion of a nation, we’re all connected to this.
It’s a picture of a man at the end of a line.”
Watch the Vanity Fair video about the original story and pictures.
Author Sebastian Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington have recently returned from Eastern Afghanistan, where they have been embedded with a platoon of American soldiers at a remote outpost in the rugged Korengal Valley.
The unit has borne the brunt of some of the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan to date, coming into contact with Taliban fighters almost daily and taking heavy casualties.
Junger and Hetherington will be going back repeatedly to this same platoon, part of a one-year project for Vanity Fair magazine and ABC News.
Their first dispatch is in the January issue of the magazine.
“Into The Valley Of Death,” is now available on the Vanity Fair Web site.
Tim Hetherington was born in Liverpool, United Kingdom, in 1970.
He studied English and Classics at Oxford University and worked as a writer and editor of children’s books, before taking up photography in 1996.
More winners and photos here.
© Tim Hetherington for Vanity Fair.