Buzzfeed is featuring a Father’s Day story that is very personal for us at The Good Men Project—that of Sara Kamber, daughter of photojournalist Michael Kamber.
Kamber has dispatched to some of the most dangerous places in the world, places that he felt needed the world’s attention. His work changes the way we see the conflict and tragedies that seem so incredibly far away and displaced from us. His work brings the lives of people in conflict zones directly into our consciousness, their humanity looks right into our eyes.
I always knew in some way that he was going to dangerous places, but when I was in college in 2003 or 2004, I picked up a paper and saw one of my dad’s photos of a soldier in Iraq. The soldier just looked terrified, and in the background was a burned body. I didn’t even know what the story was — what stood out to me was, my dad took that picture. My dad was in that situation, and looking at that soldier’s face and seeing how scared he was, I could see the danger my father was in too.
Recently Michael Kamber wrote a breathtaking feature for us, Repeating Iraq’s Mistakes in Afghanistan, that brought the “victory” so many of us believed we’d accomplished in Iraq into reality. Kamber’s accompanying photographs make you feel like you were there on the ground with him.
Sara’s story in Buzzfeed also reflects upon the death of their friend Tim Hetherington who was killed on assignment in Libya:
My anxiety definitely went through the roof when my dad decided he was going back to Iraq a couple of months after Tim’s death to cover the end of the war. It wasn’t just Tim dying — it was a very rough year for a lot of my dad’s colleagues. A very good friend of his lost his legs, and I was riding in a taxi one day and I heard on a newscast that a number of my dad’s friends had been kidnapped in Libya. But I also asked myself, how is he going to have covered this entire war, been there through the invasion and everything, and not be there for the end of it? And I knew Tim wouldn’t want me to ask my dad not to do it anymore.
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Ultimately, there couldn’t be a better Father’s Day gift than a daughter’s support of her father, especially when his career is his passion, and his ultimate goal is to bring the whole world into closer view for the rest of us.
Read the compelling story of Sara and her father at Buzzfeed.com
Photo: Michael Kamber