HONDROS. Chris Hondros. You may not know his name, but you know his work. A photographer for Getty Images, Chris Hondros showed us the world and informed us through his decades of his work as a conflict photojournalist. From the attacks of 9/11 to Iraq and Afghanistan to Kosovo to Sierra Leone to Arab Spring in Egypt to Port-au-Prince, Haiti following the January 2010 earthquake to multiple assignments in Libya, the final one covering the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi which resulted in Chris Hondros’ death along with that of fellow photojournalist, Oscar-nominated Tim Hetherington, Chris Hondros not only photographed events, but the people impacted by them. This is what separated Chris Hondros from his colleagues – his connection to his subjects and to the world.
Taking “such care to focus his work on the people who are being impacted by the events that he covered as opposed to necessarily focusing on the events themselves” Chris Hondros found the “humanity at the heart of conflict” and inhumanity of global events. And it’s that humanity and the ability to see it which led him to develop relationships with some of the photo subjects, such as Joseph Duo, a Liberian commander. One of Hondros’ most famous photographs shows Duo on a bridge leaping in the air, exalted after firing a rocket-propelled grenade at rebel forces. Years later Hondros returned to Liberia, reconnecting with Duo who wanted a new life after the war, but had no chance of attaining same. Unbeknownst to friends and family, Chris Hondros paid for Duo to return to school and get an education, in criminal justice, no less.
One person who knew Chris Hondros better than most is GREG CAMPBELL. Friends from age 14 until Chris’ untimely death, the two began their journalistic endeavors in high school. They both had a tenacity and drive that played out and served each while as they moved through life. While Chris went on to photojournalism, Greg became a renowned journalist and non-fiction author, penning most notably “Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stone” which became the 2006 film “Blood Diamonds.”
After Chris’ death in 2011, Greg wanted to do something to honor his friend, but wasn’t sure what to do or when. Ultimately, he landed on the idea of making a film. The result is HONDROS. While Greg describes the film as a labor of love, the journey was not without a lot of hard work, many contributions by former colleagues of Chris’, and many hours of revisiting Chris through his work and prior interviews and photos. Walking the fine line between objectivity and personal sentimentality, Greg maintains a high ethical standard while focusing the lens on Chris and his life, delivering a poignant, eye-opening cinematic look into the man who was Chris Hondros and the richness and truth he brought to the world. The documentary paints a beautiful portrait that is vibrant and full of life.
I spoke with GREG CAMPBELL in this exclusive interview talking about HONDROS, Chris’ legacy, Greg’s journey, and the importance of conflict photojournalists and journalists in today’s world.
An amazing documentary, Greg, absolutely amazing. I had the privilege of knowing Tim Hetherington off and on for several years and had interviewed him along with Sebastian Junger for their documentary “Restrepo”, so, I was very acutely aware of Chris’s [Hondros] passing and Tim’s passing when all of this went down in Libya.
Thank you. Yeah, that was the year, if I’m remembering this correctly, it happened just after the Oscar’s, didn’t it? They were there, they [Hetherington and Junger] were nominated for that year. I had just met Tim in Libya and he was just such a charming man and it was bittersweet, but I’m really happy to have had a chance to meet him, however briefly.
When I saw that you had done this doc on Chris, I was anxious to see it because of knowing the backstory of combat and conflict photojournalists and everything that they bring to the world that the world would be unaware of were it not for them.
Yes. That’s exactly right.
When did you decide now was the time to do this documentary on Chris?
You know, I knew pretty quickly after he was killed that I wanted to do something. I hadn’t settled on a film immediately. As a writer and an author, my first instinct was to write a biography and celebrate his life and his accomplishments that way. But, I quickly scrapped that idea when it’s just obvious that because Chris was such a visual storyteller, as his photos as I’m sure you know are just so stunning, there was no way I could write about them in any way that would do them justice and so we felt pretty quickly that doing a film about him would be the most appropriate thing. But, we didn’t really think immediately of doing it because I had never made a film before so I didn’t really know quite where to start.
So, I thought maybe a short film. I didn’t even think of where or what would be placed or who would see it, but [maybe] a short film about me going to visit Joseph Duo, the Liberian commander, because he had contacted me over Facebook not long after Chris was killed to express his own condolences and his own sorrow. And it just occurred to me that Chris had this relationship with him that I wasn’t privy to and I of course had a relationship with Chris that Joseph wasn’t aware of and maybe by both of us meeting and sharing stories, then we can kind of learn a little bit about who Chris was in a full way. And, so that was the initial concept and from there we just decided, well why stop with Joseph? I mean, there are so many stories to be told about Chris’ life because he lived inside several larger stories.
He went through the equivalent of Y2K for photography, you know by transitioning from film to digital. That was like a big deal that had everybody wondering, “oh my gosh, digital cameras” and it’s funny to think about now, but, he was like that old school photographer before the internet so he kind of lived right up to the point where we see this real change in how conflict photographers especially are treated and on battlefields amongst people who are engaged in conflicts themselves.
So, we felt that there was a larger story to tell and I think … I know I’m rambling on with this answer but, the last kind of big thing that we wanted to kind of pull out was that Chris took such care to focus his work on the people who are being impacted by the events that he covered as opposed to necessarily focusing on the events themselves. And, I think that will enter real humanity to the work that he did, the different places and we wanted our film to be able to reflect that ethic.
That’s one of the great things that you achieve with the documentary, Greg, is the humanity. Not only do we see the humanity within Chris’ photographs, but thanks to what you’ve done with the documentary, we see the humanity within him.
Thank you. I mean, that’s the best compliment I could hope for. That’s exactly what we were hoping to achieve.
And by bringing in these stories and following up with people whose lives he took a vested interest in, I just think is absolutely fabulous. I was riveted to those stories. But, I’ve gotta ask you. Visiting with Samar Hassan. How did that impact the structure of this film?
That was one of the most moving moments that I had when we interviewed her. And it came about because as we were expanding the story to encompass some of the larger things that Chris did, one of the larger events that sort of shaped his work and who he was as a photographer, we had to tackle Tal Afar and that was a messy situation and it didn’t have the sort of happy ending that the Joseph Duo situation had. As a documentary filmmaker, these are the things that you kind of embrace head on and the fact that Chris operated in an environment or several environments in which the complexity was mindboggling – Who, or What’s the right situation? The right decision to make? How do you account for and justify the things that are happening right in front of your camera lens? There’s so many shades of gray and this was perfect example of that.
And so, one of the reasons we tracked her down in the first place was journalistic. My instincts as a journalist were to give her the opportunity to speak about the event if she felt inclined because it had been obviously well covered. Chris’ photographs were sent around the world and things were written about them. I think he was on the cover of a book. We interviewed the soldier, Chris and I, in 2009 and then we interviewed him again for our film, one of the people who feels responsible for a lot of the mayhem that is around that situation, and the person that we hadn’t heard from is her. She is a living, breathing human being who is this image for better or worse and an icon of a civilian pulled into a conflict.
So I feel obligated to at least give her the opportunity if she wanted to speak with us and share her thoughts on this event that had shaped her life so profoundly. And in the meantime, pass along the message that the soldier wanted to convey, which is his apology for the events that happened. It was startling to hear her reaction to that and in the next instant it’s completely understandable to hear what she had to say and her reaction to it all. I think it just goes to illustrate again the complexities of the environment that Chris worked in. And it gives me an even higher respect for his ability to do the work that he did and not to get completely jaded and cynical about going back time and time again.
When you embarked on this and you started to structure the documentary out, how did you find your through-line and what was the actual starting point? You had thousands and thousands and thousands of pictures of Chris’ to go through plus the incredible video footage in earlier interviews so we actually get to hear Chris’ voice. Not only is this a big logistic undertaking for a filmmaker, but for you personally as a life-long friend. How did you wrap your head around this and move forward?
Well, it wasn’t easy. Not by any measure. We were in post-production for almost two years trying to unpuzzle the exact thing that you’re talking about. And one of the bigger issues, challenges I should say, one of the bigger challenges that I faced as the director was that I was also an eyewitness to the events of his life, and therefore, worthy of contributing my views as his friend who was there at the beginning of his career and as well at the end of his career. But, there’s a real balancing act that needed to take place so that I was contributing just the right amount and wasn’t diluting the bigger story that we wanted to tell about his life. And it took a lot of going back to the drawing board and lots of sheets of paper and throwing ideas at the wall.
I love to attribute the final version of this film and the heart that we finally found in it to Jenny Golden, who is our co-writer and finishing editor. And she was really able to find that through-line for us and decipher my intentions as the director and be able to pull it out of the film that we have. I owe a real debt of gratitude to her and really, really blessed to have met her on the project.
She did an amazing job, amazing job. The editing is superlative.
I’m so glad you think so, I couldn’t agree more.
Did you know where to go look for some of this archival footage?
No, and we really lucked out in a lot of ways. A lot of this archival footage, some of the interviews were – this is what a documentary is all about I suppose, but some of the interview footage that we obtained didn’t come from a primary source because the primary source is locked in a flood. So, we had a single cut together, lengthy reel that actually had burned in time code to it that we had to work around so the disparaging quality wasn’t as jarringly noticeable as it might have been otherwise. Other footage came from the families of other fellow war photographers who were gracious enough to revisit the boxes of memories of their own loved ones and pull out hours and hours and hours of the footage that we were provided from Europe. We had a real sort of team effort of people: producers, editors, and interns who were humming through online footage and going back to the original filmmakers. And so there’s a lot of group effort, a lot of brute force kind of searching going on just through online archives.
I put out a call of all of Chris’ friends and colleagues just to ask if they have any photos of him. Inge Hondros, Chris’ mother, produced, oh my gosh, I think 850 individual contact sheets of negatives that Chris had taken early in his career. So you have to convert all those to contact sheets and go through them frame by frame to see if there was anything interesting. The beautiful part of that process I’m describing, it is just a real intensive labor focus, but we were rewarded and again with beautiful images that Chris and that others had taken. We were rewarded with the scene at the very beginning of the film where Chris is taking a phone call during a gun fight. Turning over every rock was a labor intensive effort but it just really paid off for us.
I love the segments with his mother. Inge is amazing. You can see where he got his enthusiasm and his zest for life and for living.
Yes.
It definitely comes through from his mother. But, that’s something striking that you achieve with this documentary. It’s very objective despite your personal relationship. This is a very objective documentary and you really walked that fine line of not going into sensationalism or sentimentality. It’s very, very striking with the depth of the objectivity. And I think what you have done, the depths that you have gone to in making the documentary mirror the depths that Chris achieved every time he took a photo.
Thank you. Again, I can’t thank you enough for such a meaningful compliment. And, I honestly think I owe it to Chris. That objectivity was something I was really striving for because there were times when we would go down a sentimental lane with an experimental cut and I could just kind of feel his gaze from above, kind of frowning over my shoulder being like “oh no you don’t”. So, I think that his memory and being so close to him and having worked so closely with him and knowing who he was as person, to be honest about that portrayal. I’m not sure about an afterlife, but if there is one, I want to make sure when I see him he looks approvingly upon the work that we did in his memory.
I’m curious, Greg. What is, in your opinion, what is the importance of photographing and documenting all of these independent witnesses to the events of our life and our lifetime?
Well, you know, I think that it’s mainly because it’s critical as responsible citizens of the Earth to know what’s going on around us and what is happening to other people because we live in a system of government around the world and our governments make decisions in how we remain citizens of those countries on a regular basis, whether it’s to send aid, or whether it’s to send in the military. And the only way that we could hold accountable the people who are doing this stuff in our names is if we have true and accurate information about what’s happening. And, that comes from people like Chris Hondros and a very dedicated group of men and women who operated on the same level as, and they do operate on the same level as, he did. He took the responsibility of being a witness as heavily and as greatly as he did, as seriously as he did.
So I think, in this day and age in particular when anyone with a cell phone can take a photograph and there’s no shortage of “outlets” that will run without context, it makes it all the more critical to have someone who is trained in the skill of journalism, who can frame a story visually and in part, as objectively as possible, the information that’s happening in front of them. I think the importance of that is higher than ever in this particular media climate we find ourselves in.
The photos that you did select to incorporate, each one is a powerhouse and each photograph of Chris’ that you utilized tells a complete story within that frame. And, it’s remarkable to look at because I’ve seen so many of his works over years, but to see it all again, it takes me right back to the first time. What was happening in the world? What was breaking? To see it capsulized within one of these pictures. So, I can’t thank you enough for putting this together.
Thank you, thank you so much. It was truly an honor, I mean to say I took this on as a labor of love sounds so trite, but it’s obviously true. And it was a pleasure to be able to spend so much time with his work and with him again. There were times when it was very difficult obviously, but I would say overall on balance, I was the one who was blessed to have spent the most time with my friend’s body of work and his legacy and heritage that he leaves behind. I’m happy to have done it.
What do you now take from the experience of now making a documentary film? You are a filmmaker now. What do you take from this experience? What did you learn that you can now take forward with you into future projects, be they books, be it more documentaries or filmmaking, which you have a wonderful eye for so I do hope you make more.
Thank you. I would like to do more. One of the things that I view a particular challenge of any documentary is that the story you tell is constrained to what you have on camera and what you can visually convey. And, obviously I was very lucky to have had such a good subject who himself created such a visual archive that we could draw from, a rich well for us to draw from. But, I enjoy the challenge very much of figuring out how to visually tell a story. I’m a storyteller just by trade, whether it’s with words or in print or now with film. And with words you got every combination you can think of with words available to you in the English language to be able to paint your picture, to mix metaphors and that way. But, your vocabulary on film is really restricted to what you have on camera and there’s real challenges that I love and so I’m definitely gonna move forward in the film world. Continue and see where that’s gonna take me.
Do you have a favorite moment in this documentary?
That’s a good question. Yeah, I think it comes out of the Samar Hassan scene where others are sort of reflecting on Chris’ ability to see and cope with the things that he did. There’s a line from Jeff Swensen, one of his close friends who says “How do you”, let me think if it’s exactly how he put it, “How do you go into these environments and internalize so profoundly the human experience”? And I think that’s really moving to me, because I feel like Chris took on a responsibility for all of us by doing that and shouldering that burden in order to filter it through his lens so that we could be just more informed about the world that we’re living in, so we’re aware of what’s happening around us. I don’t think any of his friends, me personally thinking for myself, I certainly didn’t appreciate enough, the sacrifice he was making in order to do that for us. I think that’s my favorite spot in the film because being able to sort of reflect back after the very emotional scene that we just went through with Samar and to kind of put it into context of Chris and shouldering that burden for us and into context in his own life.
I think my favorite moment was relating the tale of taking the suits of a dead uncle and wearing them to get into the Clinton Ball. That, speaks volumes to both of you. You set your minds to do it, you were gonna get it done and in your own ways you both have done that.
Yes, that pretty much is how Chris approached things. I was equally responsible in that particular situation, but it just shows you that there’s nothing we couldn’t do at that point in our lives. We were gonna go to the Inaugural Ball, we didn’t have clothing or press credentials appropriate for it, but, by God we were gonna find some way to get it done. And we did.
Interview by debbie elias, 02/28/2018
