Live from Fallujah

[UpInArms]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/live-from-fallujah/2005/08/29/1125302504555.html

On November 16 last year, Melbourne-born photographer Ashley Gilbertson sent an email from the city of Fallujah, in Iraq, to his girlfriend in New York.

It read: "Joanna, a man was shot in the face two feet in front of me yesterday as we climbed a spiral staircase in a minaret. Have not told the (news) desk yet. I just don't know what to say. It should have been me. Cleaned all the blood and brains off my cameras and face and arms, but can't wash it out of my clothes or flak and I can smell it."

It was Gilbertson's sixth day embedded with Bravo Company, First Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, in the bloody battle for Fallujah. On assignment for The New York Times, Gilbertson, 27, describes the conflict as "without question, the most intense, horrible, scariest experience in my entire life".

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He did not capture all of these events on film — often it was too dark or too dangerous, the emotions "too raw", or the images simply too bloody.

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