It's by AP photographer Jean-Marc Bouju, who was embedded with the 101st Airborne Didvision. From the AP's press release:
The photo was made during a rare moment of humanity in a war zone, Bouju said, when a father who had been taken prisoner by American troops was allowed to hold his 4-year-old son who also was taken when the man was arrested.[via kottke]
The boy, Bouju said, was panicking and crying, so an American soldier cut the plastic handcuffs off.
"My little girl was four at the time and I couldn't help thinking what would she have thought in the same situation," he said. Bouju wasn't able to get the prisoner's name and doesn't know where he or the child is now.
The father and son featured in the image are sitting side-by-side behind coils of razor wire. The father has one hand over the boy's forehead and his other arm hangs loosely at the boy's waist. A small pair of sandals lies a few feet away in the sand.
On that day, Bouju was only able to transmit one image to his editors because of problems setting up a satellite link. It was that photo that won the award.
Thank you, Greg. My sleep will not be sound tonight.
speechless. i have to go back to daily kos for a little mangled hope
My stomach just did flips. This is the aspect of war that most of us choose not to think about until confronted with it. I am sickened by this war even more now.
Its so cliched, but I actually do have chills looking at this image. Sickened and amazed by the power of this photo all in one.
A very touching, and deeply troubling picture. My heart aches every time I look at it.
Thank you for posting this Greg.
Of course you haven't seen this picture anywhere- America's editors and producers are too busy trying to decide whether >this should be run across 6 or 8 columns, or if it should bump the G8 summit and Iraq from the lead story of the night.
It's really amazing how little coverage the effect the war is having on the families of Iraq gets... even here in Canada, where you'd expect the media to be less cheerleader-like than Fox News or even CNN, we don't really see a lot of stories on the ugly side of the war.
The most I ever saw it reported was watching the news in Japan -- they had this one story on a 9 year old boy who cried pretty much all day long every day after seeing his father slaughtered in front of his eyes...
yeah. i think this won a world press photo award in 2005. it was part of the WPP exhibition at the annenberg school of communication at USC for that year.
Very powerful. And WTH are they handcuffing a 4 year old for?!?
I feel almost numb to most of the harrowing news that comes out of this war lately, but this picture brought me to tears.
It is too horrible.
Makes all my trivial complaints all that more trivial.
This has to stop.