CNN’s Christiane Amanpour will be hosting an unprecedented print auction of contemporary photojournalism work to benefit the family of Anton Hammerl, a photographer killed in Libya last year.
Amanpour is the latest high-profile name to join a long list of journalists and photographers that have pledged to help raise funds for the education of Aurora, 11; Neo, 8; and Hiro, now one year old – Hammerl’s three children.
The South African-born and UK-based photographer was shot by Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in a remote location in the Libyan desert on 05 April 2011. He was left for dead after his colleagues Clare Morgana Gillis and James Foley were abducted following the shooting. While Libyan authorities claimed, for weeks, that they had Hammerl in custody, the truth emerged when Gillis and Foley were released.
Now the two surviving journalists have joined with photographer David Brabyn to organize an unprecedented auction at Christie’s on 15 May. Photographers such as Platon, Alec Soth, Bruce Davidson, Giles Duley, Christopher Anderson, Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Adam Ferguson, Jessica Dimmock, David Alan Harvey, David Hume Kennerly, Ed Kashi, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Yuri Kozyrev, Larry Fink, Lynsey Addario, Susan Meiselas, Ron Haviv, David Burnett, Greg Marinovich, Samuel Aranda, Roger Ballen, Joao Silva and Sabastiao Salgado, among many others, have donated prints for the auction.
La Lettre has learned that the estate of Tim Hetherington has also donated one of the late photographer’s prints to be auctioned next week. Hetherington was also killed in Libya, in a separate attack that also claimed the life of Getty Images’ photographer Chris Hondros.
The auction will also aim “to highlight the sacrifices made by photographers – particularly freelancers – who assume great risks to bring back images to agencies, magazines, publishers and readers worldwide, often with little backup,” say the organisers.
Entry to the charity auction, sponsored by Reporters Without Borders, is subject to a minimum donation of $75.
Olivier Laurent, News and Online Editor British Journal of Photography
