Podcast: Geert van Kesteren – Iraq Embed

May 16, 2007

Geert van Kesteren

In this, our third podcast from the LOOK07/Redeye symposium The Democratic Image, Geert speaks in compelling depth of the difficulties of being a photo journalist in this area of conflict, and his insights into being an Iraqi attempting to live under those conditions.

Geert embedded with the US military for months to capture the Iraqi villagers’ experience of occupation. His photographs of American soldiers breaking into homes and arresting suspects raises important questions about the “battle for hearts and minds.”

Geert first worked as a photojournalist in Iraq during Operation “Desert Fox” in 1998 and he made a portrait of Uday Hussein, Saddams’ sadistic playboy son, on assignment for the German magazine Stern in 2000.

He returned to Iraq in April, 2003, and spent seven months working on assignment for Newsweek and Stern magazines until March 2004.

He was present when mass graves were discovered in the Shiite south and was embedded with the 4th Infantry Division in August in Tikrit and in January and February in Samarra.

The images have been published in his book “Why mister, why?”