Ajdabiya Square Named After Tim Hetherington

[n2doc]

by Lenora Jane Estes April 22, 2011, 5:33 PM

Tim Hetherington, photographed at a rally in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya, March 25, 2011. By Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters.

Photographer Tim Hetherington, killed this week during the fighting in Libya, is being remembered not only by friends and colleagues here in the states but also by those whom he touched in the country where he took his last picture. Today in the eastern Libyan town of Ajdabiya, according to a dispatch from al-Jazeera, Dr. Suleiman Refardi—a British-trained surgeon who has been volunteering at the main hospital and was deeply impacted by the work of Hetherington, a Vanity Fair contributor—dedicated a town square to the 40-year-old cameraman and Oscar-nominated filmmaker. “Tim Hetherington was one of the people transmitting the light of truth,” Dr. Refardi reportedly said, before marching with fellow doctors and nurses to the square with a soundtrack of ambulance sirens, car horns, and gunfire. “The camera of Tim Hetherington is as strong as any cannon on the front. We have named the square after this hero and I now consider Tim as one of our martyrs.” A simple makeshift banner made from a white hospital sheet has been erected to mark Tim Hetherington Square and will be replaced with a more permanent fixture after the war, Al-Jazeera reports. If only Hetherington could’ve been there—out of the limelight—to photograph the scene.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/04/ajdabiya-square-named-after-tim-hetherington.html