)
"One Night in Tal Afar" earned Getty photographer Chris Hondros a Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club, and the iconic photo (above) of the girl who had just lost her parents in an accidental shooting has graced the covers of hundreds of publications worldwide.
Hondros recently returned from his ninth tour of duty in Iraq, and was on NPR this morning to discuss his time in the war zone, and the photo that has become so famous.
People have cited things like the stark lighting, which is...reminscent of certain schools of painting, and the streaks of blood on her cheeks, which reminded some people of crucicfiction imagery tears of blood type of thing. I think it's those small little points that do allow people to connect and bring people really in the moment for a picture like this.
But beyond the photo's asthetics, empathy for its subject helped it achieve its iconic status, "Here's this little girl essentially all alone in the world now, and that's, I think, one of the reasons people responded to it."
NPR has an audio slide show of Hondros talking through the series of photos he took on that night in Tal Afar when six Iraqi children lost their parents in a tragic accident.
