Tim Hetherington Quotes

I realise that I had the best of serious picture journalism. There was an innocence in our approach, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when we naively believed that by holding a mirror up to the world we could help - no matter how little - to make people aware of the human condition.

For me, photography is not just about exposing film, it's about exposing the viewer to something new, a place they haven't gone before, but most importantly, to people that they might be afraid of.

The power that you have as a storyteller is to be able to tell stories that are at once entertaining but also never lose sight of what's going on in the real world.

Film has to reflect the real world.

Critics have a responsibility to put things in a cultural and sociological or political context. That is important.

I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

Individuals and nations owe it to themselves and the world to become informed.

My function as a writer is to provide an atmosphere in which people can think wisely about what we're doing on this planet.

What I'd love to do is work with kids in the U.S. to raise their awareness and encourage them to be global citizens. We're all connected these days; we can listen to the same music as kids all around the world and share our ideas.

I think it's really important that we understand that we share this world and we're connected to it.

I think young adults get a bad rap for being self-absorbed and self-centered. My experience going around the United States and speaking in schools is that teenagers here are very interested in the fate of their peers around the world.

Ben Affleck exec-produced a documentary for HBO called 'Reporter' about my 2007 win-a-trip journey. I take the trip each year partly to encourage young people to think about global humanitarian issues: I think blogs by a student may be more compelling for that audience than my own work.

With documentary-film projects, you hope you highlight an area of concern people haven't thought about before. A lot of times, I'm asking myself - 'This seems to be a significant problem. What can be done that hasn't been done?'

In the not so distant past, we were close enough to our community to physically see how our actions impacted the group overall. Now it's just too easy to look the other way, or turn off the TV or computer and detach ourselves from the others.

I try to be a good human being and keep up with what's going on in the world by reading and staying in touch with the current events.

'No words - action' was the lesson my mother taught me: as artists, we have the privilege of holding a mirror to the world, to engage, to question, to bring beauty to a complex universe.

It's very easy, when we're reading those articles on the 20th page of 'The New York Times,' to distance ourselves and say, 'It's someone else.'

We can't afford to live in isolation, and we need to teach our kids that the things that they do not only matter to others far away but impact others who live far away, and there are ripples of effect.

It's time to give back; you know, I've lived in this beautiful world of fashion for so long, and it's time to really get my hands dirty and get in the trenches and see the world for what it really is.

Photos have the real task of bringing exposure to places that we otherwise don't have much awareness of.

There is so much going on in world, even just on the Internet. I think TV should push to put some of the positive things going on in shows, and also to discuss more of the negative things so more people can relate.

Sometimes audiences want to see what we're doing to their world. It's our obligation sometimes to reflect it.

I'd just like to see athletes awake. And aware. There's so much going on and so much to know... We stay in our little boxes and don't think much about the outside world.

And I didn't know what that meant for a long time. It was only when I began to travel and look and live beyond my home that I understand my responsibility to others.

The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our consumer society and the requirements of those who bear witness to this epoch. This affects us all, particularly the younger generations of photographers. We must take greater care than ever not to allow ourselves to be separated from the real world and from humanity.