Photojournalist David Gilkey was 50 years old when he was killed in an Afghanistan combat zone in 2016.
What he left behind was a body of work that told human stories in moments of desperation, and a high standard for the visual work that would come out of NPR, a radio-first outlet. A new book, Pictures on the Radio, collects just a portion of that work across his career.
“I still have a hard time believing he’s gone,” says photojournalist and editor Coburn Dukehart. “I just keep thinking he’s off on assignment.”
Dukehart was working as NPR’s first picture and multimedia editor when Gilkey was hired as a videographer in 2007, just as the visuals department was getting off the ground. She’d met him briefly the year before and initially was “completely intimidated by him.”
“His physique and his demeanor, you know, he could be gruff,” says Dukehart, who is now digital and multimedia director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.
But as resumes started to get sorted for the videographer job, Gilkey’s quickly rose to the top. And as the reference checks started to come in, Dukehart was surprised.
“There was a disconnect between what people in his references were saying and what my initial impression of him was,” she remembers. “His former co-workers all used words like ‘kind,’ ‘patient,’ ‘the most wonderful person you’ll ever work with,’ ‘you won’t regret hiring him.'”
