The Perilous Life of a War Photographer

War photographers, usually behind the camera and often unrecognized by those reading the day's news, have unfortunately become front page news themselves over the past several weeks. Two photographers, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondos, were recently killed in Libya while covering the conflict there, and three New York Times photographers were taken into custody in Libya and beaten and terrorized before their ultimate release. Bill Keller covers "The Inner Lives of War Photographers" in this week's New York Times Magazine. Photographer Benjamin Lowy has been covering wars since 2003, when he was embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. He, too, was recently in Libya, but returned safely to his home in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. He posted pictures from there on his Tumblr. While in Iraq, Lowy began a series of photographs he calls Iraq | Perspectives, in which he tries to give the viewer as sense of exactly how American solidiers see Iraq. So the photos are often framed by the window of a humvee or taken through nightvision goggles. Last year Lowy's photos were selected by judge William Eccleston as the winner of the fifth Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography and we are pleased to be publishing them in November 2011. Browse a gallery of photos from the book, and remember the bravery of Lowy and all war photographers as you view them