Photographer Ken Jarecke talks about his 1991 shot of an incinerated Iraqi soldier
Photographer Ken Jarecke talks about his 1991 shot of an incinerated Iraqi soldier, which was at first regarded by many editors as too disturbing to print, but later became one of the most famous images of the first Gulf War. The image shows a burned-beyond-recognition Iraqi soldier in the front window of a destroyed truck. The sun is coming in through the back of the truck and most of the surfaces in the image are burned and just torn up, so it's almost a black and white image although it was made on colour film. It was early in the morning, we had been up most of the night. There was supposed to be a ceasefire in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. We had travelled east from Nasiriya towards Basra, hooked up with Highway 8 and we started travelling south towards Kuwait City. And we came across this... just a single lorry, kind of in the middle of a double-lane highway. I was with a public affairs officer with the US Army and he said: "I don't really get my jollies o...