When Ashley Gilbertson arrived in Iraq at the beginning of the U.S. invasion he was only twenty five years old and had no affiliation with any newspaper. Nevertheless, he was among the first photojournalists to cover the conflict for American audiences. Soon picked up as a freelance photographer for the New York Times, Gilbertson has since established himself as one of the most adept chroniclers of the conflict in the middle east.
Yesterday, the New York Times ran a special piece in the Arts and Leisure featuring a selection of Gilbertson’s photographs of the war, all of which can be found in his new book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer’s Chronicle of the Iraq War. Dexter Filkins prefaces Gilbertson’s photos in the NYT saying:

Ashley Gilbertson, a freelance photographer for the New York Times, has followed the war in Iraq from its beginning through its most singular moments. In his new book… Gilbertson has compiled the best of those images, freezing the war’s most intense and dramatic moments… The heart of the book, graphically and emotionally, is the battle of Falluja in November 2004, when 6,000 marines and soldiers went into what was then a contested jihadi stronghold. Those photos capture street-to-street fighting in all its manic ferocity.
But the most moving of these images are not of fighting and violence but of the moments in between: a group of soldiers sunning themselves during a pause in the battle, a child hurling himself down a slide at a Baghdad playground, an Iraqi man and son standing frozen before an American soldier. Moments like these remind us just how human the experience of war really is.

Check out the photographs from the New York Times piece on their website, then navigate to our web site for the book to view a fascinating interview with the photographer and hear him speak about his personal experiences photographing war.