Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War by Ashley Gilbertson, Dexter Filkins (Introduction)

The Barnes & Noble Review

Ashley Gilbertson's photographs of the Iraq war have the power to freeze the blood in your heart. Turning the pages of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, it's impossible to merely skim through the images of oppressed Kurds, stunned Baghdad residents, weary U.S. Marines, and dead insurgents sprawled in the growing pond of their own blood. "It was never my intention to become a war photographer," Gilbertson writes at the beginning of the book. "If people wanted to kill each other, so be it, not my problem." Famous last words. In 2003, he was in northern Iraq among the Kurds, working as a freelance photographer, when the U.S. began its invasion from the south. Eventually, he signed a contract with The New York Times and was criss-crossing the country, following the action to Baghdad, Samarra, Tikrit, and Falluja, his lens capturing the many ways people kill each other. The best of those photos have been gathered into Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (the military's phonetic acronym, politely translated, amounts to "What the frick?"). That spirit of surprise and confusion hangs over the book, both in the pictures and in the textual interludes that dramatize Gilbertson's experiences. He rarely misses an opportunity to illustrate the irony and heartbreak of the events unfolding around him. Here, for instance, is one photo's caption: "A doctor at the morgue in Ramadi stands reflected in a pool of blood while waiting for more victims from a car bombing." As good as the photos are, the stories behind them are even more riveting. His account of moving under fire with Marines as they assault Falluja will leave you dry mouthed and looking at the distant conflict in a new light. Like legendary combat photographers Robert Capa and David Douglas Duncan, Gilbertson knows it only takes a shutter click to bring the war home. --David Abrams

From the Publisher

Arriving in Iraq on the eve of the U.S. invasion, unaffiliated with any newspaper and hoping to pick up assignments along the way, Ashley Gilbertson was one of the first photojournalists to cover the disintegration of America’s military triumph as looting and score settling convulsed Iraqi cities. Just twenty-five years old at the time, Gilbertson soon landed a contract with the New York Times, and his extraordinary images of life in occupied Iraq and of American troops in action began appearing in the paper regularly. Throughout his work, Gilbertson took great risks to document the risks taken by others, whether dodging sniper fire with American infantry, photographing an Iraqi bomb squad as they diffused IEDs, or following marines into the cauldron of urban combat.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot gathers the best of Gilbertson’s photographs, chronicling America’s early battles in Iraq, the initial occupation of Baghdad, the insurgency that erupted shortly afterward, the dramatic battle to overtake Falluja, and ultimately, the country’s first national elections. No Western photojournalist has done as much sustained work in occupied Iraq as Gilbertson, and this wide-ranging treatment of the war from the viewpoint of a photographer is the first of its kind. Accompanying each section of the book is a personal account of Gilbertson’s experiences covering the conflict. Throughout, he conveys the exhilaration and terror of photographing war, as well as the challenges of photojournalism in our age of embedded reporting. But ultimately, and just as importantly, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot tells the story of Gilbertson’s own journey fromhard-drinking bravado to the grave realism of a scarred survivor. Here he struggles with guilt over the death of a marine escort, tells candidly of his own experience with post-traumatic stress, and grapples with the reality that Iraq—despite the sacrifice in Iraqi and American lives—has descended into a civil war with no end in sight.

A searing account of the American experience in Iraq, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is sure to become one of the classic war photography books of our time.

Publishers Weekly

This collection of photographs and commentary presents a relentlessly tragic vision of the ongoing conflict in Iraq, where freelance and later New York Times photographer Gilbertson began working even before the U.S. invasion. Based in Iraqi Kurdistan, he missed much early fighting when Turkey refused passage to U.S. troops. Entering the northern city of Mosul, he was outraged to see newly liberated citizens engaged in an orgy of looting, quickly joined by the Kurdish troops whom he accompanied. Gilbertson's camera records chaos descending as the Kurds and Arabs (longtime enemies) sectioned off their neighborhoods and began arming themselves, even before Baghdad fell. In dozens of striking battle scenes, American soldiers go about their business with courage and discipline but show little affection for Iraq's civilians and positive contempt for its army. While plenty of dead and injured Iraqis are pictured, no dead Americans appear (because fellow soldiers forbid photographs), though captions in half a dozen name those later killed. The author rarely passes up the chance to record blood stains, ruined homes, flames and explosions as well as the sad stories behind them. Not yet 30, Gilbertson has clearly studied James Nachtwey, Robert Capa and David Douglas Duncan; this impressive book shows he has absorbed their lessons. (Nov. 1)

Product Details

• ISBN: 0226293254
  
• ISBN-13: 9780226293257
• Format: Hardcover, 264pp
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Pub. Date: November 2007
• Sales Rank: 119,013