winesburg, ohio

Your vision, though, let’s talk about that … Before this last trip you told me that you wanted to make a film about the relationship between young men and violence. You had this idea that young men in combat act in ways that emulate images they’ve seen — movies, photographs — of other men in other wars, other battles. You had this idea of a feedback loop between the world of images and the world of men that continually reinforced and altered itself as one war inevitably replaced another in the long tragic grind of human affairs.

That was a fine idea, Tim — one of your very best … I don’t know if it was worth dying for — what is? — but it was certainly an idea worth devoting one’s life to.

sebastian junger, in memory of tim hetherington.