ABSTRACT
British photographer Tim Hetherington played a central part in visualizing the war on terror. In the context of the patriotic fervor surrounding the War on Terror, the narrative in Infidel challenges some of the prevailing cultural conceptions of the American soldier. Hetherington's photos lend themselves well to an examination of war and masculinity. Some of the photos in Infidel play on variations of traditional "soldierly masculinity", defined by Jon Robert Adams as "the particular brand of traditional male function associated with heroism—courage, suppressed emotion, strength, and clearheaded decisiveness". In a time of renewed patriotism, Hetherington's Infidel provides a corrective to America's "time-honored link between its sense of national self and the performance of American men at war". Hetherington is deliberately subverting a particular patriotic discourse in the photos. The potential emotional power of the photos is a result of the cumulative effect of Hetherington's intimate moments with the soldiers.
