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 from hard-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.
