Unembedded

Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson and Rita Leistner; Foreword by Philip Jones Griffiths, Introduction by Phillip Robertson
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"Much of what is shown in Unembedded will probably disturb many Americans who have generally watched a sanitized version of the war and occupation unfold on their TV screens. Unembedded captures the whole range of Iraqi life under US occupation from joyful wedding scenes to the carnage of civilian casualties. Its a stunning book."

—Peter Bergen, author of Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden

Truth, it has been said, is the first casualty of war. In the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, official truth died months before the bombing of Baghdad began. Unembedded bears witness to the enduring power of independent journalism. In their unflinching look at war-ravaged Iraq, four freelance photojournalists show that life there is brutal yet poignant; that compassion co-exists with anger, hatred and fear. By gaining the confidence of Iraqi civilians and insurgents, these photojournalists have brought back images of life in wartime, from beauty parlors and joyful wedding scenes to the carnage of civilian casualties, the heartbroken faces of grieving parents, and the glassy-eyed shock of parentless children.

This is not the view from a Marine base. These photographers were on the streets of Baghdad when it fell, amid a crowd of civilians under aerial attack, and in the holy Imam Ali shrine with the Mahdi Army during the siege of Najaf. Their images document issues often underrepresented: the insurgency as seen from inside the separate resistance movements, civilians affected by the battles between U.S. and insurgent forces, growing conservatism and fundamentalism and their effects on women, and the devastating effects of ongoing civilian casualties.

Working outside the U.S. military’s official “embedding” program, the authors bring us face-to-face with the people of Iraq. They combine photographs and essays with excerpts from two years of personal letters, journal entries, and feature stories to take us across front lines and cultural barriers into the lives of a nation in crisis. Theirs is a path to understanding the cost of war.

Unembedded Video

View the Speakeasy Productions video of Unembedded and hear the photographers discuss their work in Iraq.

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Unmbedded Photographer Kael Alford to be Featured on PBS

A new PBS series called American Investigative Reports is featuring Kael Alford photographs from "Unembedded" and photographer Paul Fusco in an episode on documentary photography and Iraq. Paul Fusco's featured work deals with the funerals of American servicemen and women killed in Iraq.

The program will air in New York City on October 6 at 10 p.m. EST. To find out when it will air in your local area visit www.pbs.org/wnet/air.

Meet the Photographers

“We crossed the lines because we believe it is more important to humanize a conflict than it is to trade in rhetorical truths, or to reinforce easy notions of enemy and friend, which are mere propaganda.”

—from the Introduction, Phillip Robertson, contributor, Salon.com

Born in Middletown, NY, 1971. Kael is a freelance photojournalist who has spent more than eight months of the last year and a half in Iraq. She was based in Baghdad during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Her recent work from Iraq focuses on the growing culture of resistance, conservative religion and the grass roots movements developing since the invasion of Iraq.

Kael has worked extensively covering culture, politics and conflict in Southeast Europe and the Middle East for many major US and European magazines and newspapers. Her work from the conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia was recognized in the Pictures of the Year competition in 2001 and 2002. She has a master's degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism and has taught photojournalism at the American University of Bulgaria. She is based in Amsterdam and New York and is represented by Panos Pictures in London.

Kael is one of the photographers featured in the CBC documentary Beyond Words. The film focuses on the world's top war photojournalists, and attempts to turn the lens of attention onto them as they reflect upon their experience photographing war and conflicts.

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Born in Montgomery, Alabama, 1966. Thorne has been covering international news with Corbis/Sygma since 1999. Thorne's photographs are regularly published in magazines and newspapers including Time, Newsweek, Stern, New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Times (London), The Guardian, and others. He has a master's degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism and formerly taught Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University in Bulgaria.

Thorne has spent ten months of the last two years in Iraq. He is among the few active journalists who worked in Iraq during the sanctions period before the most recent war.  While covering the war itself from Baghdad, he was arrested by Iraqi intelligence and expelled from the country. He returned to Iraq as soon as the borders opened at the end of the war and has covered the nascent occupation resistance movements - both Sunni and Shiite. His most recent Iraq coverage (late June - early September) focussed on Shiite uprisings from the Mehdi Militia side from the defacto autonomous Sadr City to the besieged Najaf, where he and journalist, Phillip Robertson, spent three days inside the Imam Ali shrine with the Mehdi Militia and it supporters at the peak of the American military siege.

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Born in Toronto, Canada, Rita Leistner is a graduate of the International Center for Photography in New York, and has a master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Toronto. She spent 10 months covering the war in Iraq between April 2003 and September 2004. With a focus on in-depth, long-term projects, her feature work includes a profile of an American Cavalry Unit during a three month embed in the spring and summer of 2003, a portrait story of women residents at the Al Rashad Psychiatric Hospital in Baghdad, and a feature on the gravediggers at the cemetery of Najaf during the August-September siege of 2004. She often writes as well as photographs her stories. Her photographs and stories from Iraq have been published in The Walrus, Newsweek, Time, Colors, Rolling Stone and Maclean's, among other publications.

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Born in Baghdad, Iraq, 1975. Ghaith studied architecture in Baghdad University and had never travelled outside Iraq until after the recent war. A deserter from Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army, Ghaith lived under ground in Baghdad for six years, changing his residence every few months to avoid detection and arrest.

He began making street photography in 2001 and determined to document conditions in Baghdad during the war. Arousing suspicion, he was arrested three days before the end of the war and, though he escaped by bribing his guards, he lost his cameras and all his film. The day after the fall of Baghdad, Ghaith satisfied an aching curiosity by walking into one of Saddam’s palaces, talking his way past American guards by claiming to be a foreign journalist.

Soon after, Ghaith began writing for The Guardian, and Washington Post. His photographs began to appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Times (London), and others. He has deftly managed to photograph and write from the front lines of both the Sunni and Shia insurgency movements. He was one of the last journalists to work in insurgent-held Fallujah before the American all-out assault on that city in April, 2004. He also worked behind Mehdi Militia front lines during the American assault on Najaf in August of the same year. Ghaith was wounded by shrapnel to his head when U.S. helicopters fired rockets into a crowd of civilians on Baghdad’s Haifa street in September. Of the six people seeking shelter from the attack behind a small street kiosk, Ghaith was the sole survivor.

Ghaith has continued his work, photographing for international publications and writing freelance for The Guardian, documenting the daily violence on the streets of Baghdad, inside stories of a culture in crisis, and the Iraqi elections in March.

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