Ashley Gilbertson

Who is Ashley Gilbertson?

Ashley Gilbertson is a photographer with the VII Photo Agency known for his images of the Iraq war and the effects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on returning veterans and their families. Born in Melbourne, Australia, he started his career at thirteen taking pictures of skateboarders. After graduating secondary school, he was mentored by Filipino photographer Emmanuel Santos, and later Masao Endo in the Japanese highlands.

While he was based in Australia, Gilbertson worked on socially driven photo essays ranging from drug addiction in Melbourne to war zones in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. In 1999 he photographed Kosovar refugees in Australia. For the next three years Gilbertson's work focused on refugee issues around the world.

In 2002, Gilbertson travelled to the Kurdish enclave of Northern Iraq. Shortly thereafter, President George W. Bush made a case for war in Iraq, and Gilbertson travelled back to cover the story at the beginning of 2003. His work was published widely, and one of his images from the invasion was included in Time Magazine's 'Pictures of the Year'. In 2004 Gilbertson won the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award from the Overseas Press Club for his photographic reportage on 'The Battle For Fallujah'. The Capa Award is for "the best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise". Gilbertson continued to cover Iraq on contract for The New York Times until 2008. A photographic memoir of Gilbertson's time there entitled Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was published by the University of Chicago Press in the fall of 2007.