Chris Hondros (March 14, 1970 – April 20, 2011) was an American war photographer. Hondros was a finalist twice for a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography.
Biography
Chris Hondros was born in New York City to immigrant Greek and German parents who were child refugees after World War II. He spent most of his childhood in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he graduated from Terry Sanford High School in 1988.
Hondros studied English literature at North Carolina State University where he also worked for the Technician, the campus newspaper. In 1991, Hondros submitted his portfolio and was invited to attend the Eddie Adams Workshop. After graduating from State in 1993, Hondros moved to Athens, Ohio, and earned a master's degree at Ohio University School of Visual Communications. In 2001, Hondros was selected for the Pew Fellowship for International Reporting through Johns Hopkins University. Hondros also followed Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004. His work included disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
His work appeared as the covers of magazines such as Newsweek and the Economist, and on the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
His photography was featured in the documentary film, Liberia: A Fragile Peace (2006).
Iraq photos
Hondros's images from Iraq, especially a January 2005 picture series detailing the shooting of an Iraqi family by U.S. troops, were published extensively and garnered worldwide acclaim and criticism.
On January 18, 2005, an Iraqi family was traveling in a car in Tal Afar. Fearing a suicide bomber, U.S. troops fired warning shots, then fired into the vehicle, killing both parents and paralyzing one of their five children sitting in the back seat. As a result of the worldwide interest in his case generated by Hondros's pictures, the boy, Rakan Hassan, was later flown to the United States for treatment in a Boston hospital, but was murdered in a bombing by insurgents shortly after his return.
Hondros won dozens of international awards for the images. One of his pictures of this tragedy is likely to become "one of the few photos from the Iraq war that could stand out in history" according to Liam Kennedy, from University College Dublin.
In an interview, Hondros stated: