It\'s Chelsea Manning From Now On in The Times

The Times will begin immediately to call the former Bradley Manning by her preferred name â€" Chelsea Manning.

An e-mail on Monday night from Susan Wessling, the deputy editor who supervises the copy desk, to newsroom editors said:

“Starting tomorrow, we will move to a new formulation:

… Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning…

‘Private Manning' on later references, and ‘she' for the pronoun.”

As I wrote last week, this is a circumstance that has little if any precedent, given Private Manning's prominence in the news. Over the weekend, the executive editor Jill Abramson, appearing at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association event in Boston, said The Times would go in this direction.

The Huffington Post reported on Tuesday that many news outlets are following the same course.

I'm glad to see The Times make this move and to do so fairly quickly. It's the right thing to do.

In News Coverage and Editorials on Syria, How Much Skepticism in The Times?

Many Times readers are looking at recent news coverage of Syria, and editorials on the same subject, through the lens of another international conflict: the United States invasion of Iraq.

In many comments on articles and e-mails to the public editor, that theme emerges clearly. Readers do not want the drumbeat of war echoing from their newspaper or its online equivalent; in fact, they are highly sensitive to any hint of that, and want to see The Times be as skeptical and questioning as possible as the nation moves closer to military action.

Marc Kagan of Manhattan is one reader who is watching closely. He wrote to me several times this week with specific observations about the news and opinion offerings. On Wednesday, he complained that The Times's coverage the last few days had been ‘like déjà vu all over again,” rife with “implicit justifications” for going to war. Among the assumptions: “That the administration is telling the truth. … That the U.S. (and perhaps a handful of allies) has the moral right to intervene and to decide when and how to intervene. …That the U.S. is the ‘city on the hill,' with higher moral standards than other nations.”

He added:

There is no particular reason to assume any of these ideas (Iraq, N.S.A., drones, etc.) but they are embedded in the very essence of the reportage; as Gramsci might have said, they are the ‘common sense‘ within which the Times reporters operate. Past wars, past lies? Just aberrations, surely, with no consequence for today's policies.

Has The Times learned its much-needed lesson from the run-up to the Iraq war? Is there a conscious effort not to contribute to the drumbeat?

I talked with the managing editor Dean Baquet about this on Thursday, and to Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, on Friday. I asked both to what extent the work they are supervising â€" respectively, news stories and opinion pieces, including Times editorials â€" is influenced by an expressed desire to avoid past mistakes.

Mr. Baquet told me that the specter of Iraq is not something that has come up explicitly for discussion in meetings he has held among editors and reporters on the Syria coverage.

“I've never said, ‘Let's remember what happened with Iraq,'” he told me. “I don't think it's necessary. I haven't had to instruct the staff to ask hard questions. They are doing that.”

He added: “The press's coverage of Iraq always lurks in the background. But it was a long, long time ago.”

Syria is not another Iraq, he said â€" one of the major differences, he said, is that the Obama administration has no enthusiasm for this conflict in the way that President George W. Bush's administration did a decade ago.

“Nobody could read our coverage and say that The New York Times is trumpeting war,” Mr. Baquet added.

Some readers, though, are saying something close to that. Andrew Cholakian is one of those readers, who put it this way: “Given how deeply unpopular this conflict is among the people of this country, I find it remarkable that The Times has chosen to be little more than an administration mouthpiece. There has been no room for dissenting opinions on The Times's home page, though the comments on articles are full of them. Another Middle Eastern nation, another unsubstantiated intelligence claim, and The Times, parroting the executive branch. History repeats itself.”

Also, some commenters are making the same case, including the former International Herald Tribune reporter Patrick L. Smith in Salon.

When I asked Mr. Baquet to address this point of view, he said, “The readers are holding us to a standard, and that's good, but we've more than met that.”

Mr. Rosenthal described a different approach. When I asked him if The Times editorial board had expressly grappled with the specter of Iraq as it writes about Syria, he answered: “Absolutely. No question.”

After the falsification of intelligence leading up to Iraq, he said, “We can't ever accept at face value what we're being told.”

He said that, in editorial board meetings “we've had direct discussions about this, where we've said, ‘We're back in Iraq.'”

The sentiment, he said, was essentially this: “We gave far too much credence to the government. Let's not do that again.”

Here's my take: I've been observing The Times's Syria coverage and its editorials for many weeks, with an eye to this question. While The Times has offered deep and rich coverage from both Washington and the Syrian region, the tone cannot be described as consistently skeptical. I have noticed in recent weeks the ways that other major newspapers have signaled to their readers that they mean to question the government's assertions. For example, although it may seem superficial, The Washington Post has sent a strong message when it has repeatedly used the word “alleged” in its main headlines to describe the chemical weapons attacks.

I have also found that The Times sometimes writes about the administration's point of view in The Times's own voice rather than providing distance through clear attribution. This is a subtle thing, and individual examples are bound to seem unimportant, but consider, for example, the second paragraph of Friday's lead story. (The boldface emphasis is mine.)

The negative vote in Britain's Parliament was a heavy blow to Prime Minister David Cameron, who had pledged his support to Mr. Obama and called on lawmakers to endorse Britain's involvement in a brief operation to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad for apparently launching a deadly chemical weapons attack last week that killed hundreds.

With the use of the word “apparently” â€" rather than directly attributing the administration, The Times seems to take the government's position at face value. It's a tiny example, of course, but in the aggregate it's the kind of thing the readers I've quoted here are frustrated about.

When The Times's news coverage does take a more distanced approach, it does so extremely well â€" perhaps nowhere better than in Thursday's front-page lead article on the administration's intelligence challenges by Mark Mazzetti and Mark Landler, with the headline “U.S. Facing Test on Data to Back Action on Syria.” That article acknowledged the influence of “botched intelligence” about Iraq and a “deeply skeptical” public, and referred to “bellicose talk” from the administration and pushback from some members of Congress.

On the opinion side, I have found The Times's editorials â€" the opinions of the editorial board - appropriately cautious. While the Op-Ed views on Syria might be faulted for not including many strong outside voices clearly making the argument against the conflict, The Times's own editorials have had a questioning tone. (Thursday's lead editorial began, “Despite the pumped-up threats and quickening military preparations, President Obama has yet to make a convincing legal or strategic case for military action against Syria.”)

The editorials have maintained a tough-minded tone in recent days, even as a United States attack on Syria seems inevitable.

The Public Editor\'s Sunday Column: A Year in the Life of a Watchdog

A Year in the Life of a Watchdog

IT'S a Monday morning in August - last Monday, to be precise - and more than 500 e-mails have arrived in the public editor's in-box. Some are spam. Some are requests for corrections or assignments, which can be sent to another desk. But a bunch, maybe two dozen, are legitimate topics for investigation or exposition. As my crack assistant, Meghan Gourley, does triage on the e-mail, I pick a subject for a blog post that seems timely, important and of broad interest - The Times's use of anonymous sources, particularly on that day's front page - and start reporting it.

During the day, I interview Scott Shane, a national security reporter, and Carolyn Ryan, the politics editor. I refresh my memory on what the stylebook says, and I quote from two letters from readers that are especially on point. I write about 800 words and send the post to the copy desk. In the meantime, we deal with other complaints unlikely to be the topic of columns or blog posts: a grieving sister who has been in touch with us for many months about a news report on her sibling's death; a reader who thinks the photographs in a full-page ad for a Times cruise don't represent reality; a reader complaining that his idea for a story was stolen. Each gets some attention.

I also have my scrawled notes from reading the Sunday paper. I'm still looking at T: The Times Style Magazine to see if its level of diversity has increased (not much). I'm wondering if the Clintons-do-the-Hamptons story could be intended as Timesean self-parody. I'm paying particular attention to the skepticism and soundness of the Syria coverage, which becomes the topic of my Friday blog post.

The day hurtles on. My boss, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., stops by for a moment to make a joke (I'm hereby deleting his expletive) about The Times's printing the “f-word,” which is being written about elsewhere as if it were the first time, though it isn't. Later, I'm asked by a few media reporters to comment on this momentous nonevent, but I don't have much to say. (Journalists, journalism professors and journalism students take a particular interest in the Times public editor's role as the readers' representative and internal watchdog; I hear from many of them by e-mail, on Twitter and in real life.)

A familiar sense washes over me of being simultaneously overwhelmed and exhilarated. I leave for the day. But I can't really get away - the 24-hour-a-day world of continuous comment follows me wherever I go. I've taken seriously The Times's desire to have the public editor go digital; the job is more public than ever, and in new ways. As a result, I'm sometimes grateful for my smartphone's “do not disturb” option.

When I started as The Times's fifth public editor almost exactly a year ago, I couldn't have anticipated the intensity and breadth of the job. It is equal parts fun and horror - every day, all day. I've joked to friends that this is the universe's way of teaching me, once and for all, not to try to please everyone. Sometimes I feel like shouting, “I get it, already!”

The one-year mark has encouraged me to pause and take stock. Here's what I feel good about: The feedback from readers who tell me they feel I'm listening to their thoughts about The Times; the sense that, a few times, I've made a small difference - in pushing to ban quotation approval by news sources and to avoid false balance in stories, in calling for a high bar on acceding to government requests; in highlighting the need for more coverage of poor and low-income people, and more sustained environmental coverage; in writing passionately about government secrecy and press rights during a crucial time.

I don't feel so good about not being able to investigate every complaint from every individual reader fully, or about making some misjudgments in individual posts - my Nate Silver commentary, among others, has probably been off-base - or about failing to make a dent in longtime problems like the overuse of anonymous sources. Looking forward, I hope to give more attention to the quickly changing world of newspaper economics and how journalism is affected, as The Times explores the necessity of making money in new ways - through conferences, cruises, advertiser-sponsored multimedia projects and new forms of advertising.

I'm often asked what I've learned about The Times from this unique perch. I've found it to be excellent but hardly flawless, and its flaws are stubborn ones. Its resources - a top-flight newsroom of more than 1,000 people - make its journalism indispensable, but that is often accompanied by self-satisfaction. Although The Times usually corrects factual errors quickly, it is not quick to admit that matters of tone or practice could be better, or that a decision should be reconsidered; when questioned, some of its journalists shift reflexively into a defensive crouch.

Maybe because they are highly intelligent and at the top of their profession, some Times staff members are more inclined to mount an elaborate argument than to accept the value of someone else's point of view. That's not everyone, of course. But it's typical enough behavior that the opposite - openness and the desire to seek improvement - seems like the exception to the rule.

And yet, paradoxically, a spirit of collegiality and idealism often prevails. Although being public editor is no way to win a workplace popularity contest, I have found a remarkable level of cooperation, professionalism and even appreciation from Times staff members. In the big picture, they want The Times to be as good as it can be, and as good as its readers expect it to be.

My ruling principle has been to report each blog or column fully, to amplify the voices of thoughtful readers, to read The Times with an eye toward constructive criticism and to press reporters and editors for answers.

The day I began last September, I sent out a Twitter message quoting Bob Dylan's warning: “You're gonna have to serve somebody.” I said then that I wanted to serve Times readers. It's been a tumultuous year, but, as I head into a second one, that goal hasn't changed a bit.

Follow the public editor on Twitter at twitter.com/sulliview and read her blog at publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com. The public editor can also be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 1, 2013, on page SR12 of the New York edition with the headline: A Year in the Life of a Watchdog.

Joao Silva: Looking Back, Moving Forward

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#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

PERPIGNAN, France â€" An exhibition of the first 20 years of Joao Silva’s photography, from 1990 to 2010, is on display here this week at the Visa Pour l’Image festival, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary under the direction of Jean-François Leroy.

Mr. Silva, a New York Times staff photographer, lost his legs after stepping on a land mine in Afghanistan in 2010. He is currently based in South Africa and recently photographed the riots in Zamdela in January and the anniversary of the Marikana miners’ strike massacre in August. His conversation with James Estrin has been edited.

Q.

Tell me about your show at the festival. How did this come about?

A.

Jean-François Leroy has been amazingly supportive. He had a show for me curated by David Furst [The Times's foreign picture editor] while I was in the hospital, and Jean-François invited me to do another show this year. I spent months and months, while recovering between surgeries, looking at my negatives and going through my body of work. It’s re-looking at your work in a very different way, because obviously I have changed very much in the past few years.

After all that time and going through pretty much every single negative that I have â€" I’ve lost a lot of work, sadly â€" but in the end, the show ended up only being about three countries. I was looking at this body of work, which Greg Marinovich had helped me to edit in several sessions, and it included Iraq, Somalia, Georgia and Sudan â€" pretty much every single country where I shot a decent frame. And when I looked back, the only work that really stood out from the rest was the body of work from South Africa, obviously, and Iraq and Afghanistan.

No irony intended, but those were the three countries that shaped me as a human being. And it was an interesting process of rediscovery.

Q.

How so?

A.

You’re reliving a lot of memories, especially with the South Africa work. Even two decades later, so much of it is still pretty raw. And all of it is in the images, including the day when Ken [Oosterbroek] was killed and Greg [Marinovich] was shot. There are images of all that. It becomes difficult. It becomes really difficult. And I was in a deep funk for the first month of the process.

Joao Silva Zulu women attacked another woman at the entrance of a hostel in Thokoza, South Africa, which housed Inkatha Freedom Party warriors during the escalated violence between them and the African National Congress after the apartheid regime lifted its ban on political parties. Circa 1990.

I decided to start with South Africa because that was my beginning. We’re looking at reams and reams of negatives, some in envelopes, some just lying loose. Negatives, positives. I hadn’t been the greatest when it came to taking care of my physical archive. So it was a complex thing, and of course I changed.

Q.

How have you changed?

A.

There’s been a readjustment, and I’ve come to terms with my new place in the universe, my new role in the universe, because of the physical changes. It’s been complex. As you can imagine, this has been a life-changing event on every single level, and I think that extends to my photographic persona and my professional persona. It’s been a complex little trip.

Q.

So in this exercise of going through your work, really every negative, and in a sense reliving these experiences, what did you learn?

A.

I discovered that I’ve taken a lot of crappy pictures over time.

I discovered that I photographed more dead than the average person. I came across reams and reams of endless corpses â€" faces, people who I have no idea who they are, what their names were â€" I have no clue. In many cases memories are linked to those images; in some cases not.

I learned that I still have a long way to go.

Q.

What do you mean?

A.

Well, I mean, I’m not finished, I’m not done. I still have lots to accomplish. And as you know, I’m back at work. I’ve been running around. This last operation has been successful, so I kind of got back on the bandwagon with [the former South African president Nelson] Mandela. So I’m shooting riots and whatever else comes my way. It’s good to be out and about again. I walk free now. I no longer have a cane. That was the key to shooting pictures freely again. Both hands are free to grab a camera, and that’s just amazing.

It’s also great just to see my name again in the paper.

Joao Silva Residents of Boipatong, South Africa, surrounded a man whom they accused of being an Inkatha Freedom Party supporter. They killed him as the rest of the community was preparing to bury more than 40 residents who had been massacred days earlier by I.F.P. warriors. 1992.

Q.

And what has it been like been shooting again?

A.

Well, it’s been good. It’s been interesting, because I’m discovering my limits. I’m discovering how much mobility I have, where I can go, what I can do. I find myself missing images because I can’t get to a certain event quick enough or an incident quick enough. So you find yourself sitting back a little bit more and having to think about your photography and to pick your moments. But the more kinetic stuff that I’ve covered â€" I’ve covered two riots since I’ve gone back to work, and eight people were killed â€" that’s fast-moving pace.

There were bullets and tear gas. So it’s moving pretty fast, and I’ve been O.K. I’ve managed and I’ve been published â€" the pictures are there. I’ve just been slowed down somewhat. And that’s been the process: just planting my feet again and seeing where I am and how much I can endure. Of course, at the end of those days when I’ve been out working from dawn till dusk, I’m in extreme pain. But until that point, I’m able to sustain and I’m quite mobile and I’m quite surprised.

Q.

When any photographer gets older, you slow down, you figure out how to compensate, how to be smarter.

A.

I think you just find yourself thinking more about what is you’re trying to do in any given moment. There’s always alternate images to the obvious. The obvious image is always there, but not the alternate images. At times, the alternate image is the better image; at times not, of course. It depends on what it is that’s being photographed.

You find your best possible position to stand and thank God you shoot pictures. I think my body and my soul have been yearning to shoot. I’m just basically doing the day-to-day stuff that’s been happening here until I get the opportunity to get back to the States for new legs. But hopefully this last big surgery was it. Hopefully I will be done. I feel strong, I feel good. There’s the pain, but pain is going to be there for a while, I’m told.

Joao Silva A street scene in Kabul during the years of civil war between rival mujahedeen warlords that followed the withdrawal of Soviet forces. 1994.

Q.

You said before that you’ve adjusted to your new role in the universe. What role is that?

A.

I guess my new role is what it always was. Because of the limitations and because of my physical condition, I thought that there might have to be something new. But in the end, my place in the universe is going to be as it always was, just maybe a little bit slower and a little bit more calculated out of necessity. You can’t move as quickly, be it through injury or be it through old age.

I’ve been recovering bits and pieces of my old life. I’ve been dedicating a huge amount of time to my family. As you can imagine, my little family has taken a hell of a hammering as a result, and we’re still dealing with a lot of the fallout. But it’s good.

Q.

In a way, by choosing only these three countries you’ve made this less of a retrospective exhibit and more of an autobiographical one. Can you describe why each of the countries represented in the exhibition are important to you?

A.

They’ve all had their own emotional impact, and they’ve all left their own mark in their own, very different way.

Of course, with Afghanistan, obviously, I lost my legs there. Not only that, I first went to Afghanistan in ’94, during the civil war. So there’s been this long relationship. South Africa, of course, is my adopted country. [Mr. Silva was born in Portugal.]

It was difficult not only covering that kind of conflict in your own country because of the uncertainty that goes along with it, but also I lost lots of best friends. I saw people getting killed in front of me.

The last time I went to Iraq was in 2010, just before I got hurt later in the year. It was a huge bunch of time and experiences and friendships. Friends lost in Iraq â€" all of it leaves a mark. The camera doesn’t falter that much. The camera captures, and that’s where it stops. But it leaves a mark on you, and in my case, very much so.

Too many memories â€" good memories, bad memories. As a photographer, you’re documenting the heroism of others. They’re the heroes, not us. And we’re there to document those moments of glory in their lives, and we are fortunate to be able to do that in many ways. We are fortunate to intrude on people’s lives and be able to document these most incredible, intimate moments.

Q.

So what do you make of Visa Pour l’Image? It’s sort of like a tribal gathering, isn’t it?

A.

Oh, it is. We are very much a tribe. We draw all sorts. If you look through our ranks, we have everything. We have every color, shade, personality. We are, in our souls, amazing people â€" saints and sinners. I mean, we have it all.

Joao Silva for The New York Times On Oct. 23, 2010, Mr. Silva stepped on a land mine while on patrol in Afghanistan. Though critically injured, having lost both legs and sustained severe internal injuries, he continued photographing until he was too weak to hold the camera. These three images were taken just after the explosion.

Follow @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.

Joao Silva: Looking Back, Moving Forward

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

PERPIGNAN, France â€" An exhibition of the first 20 years of Joao Silva’s photography, from 1990 to 2010, is on display here this week at the Visa Pour l’Image festival, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary under the direction of Jean-François Leroy.

Mr. Silva, a New York Times staff photographer, lost his legs after stepping on a land mine in Afghanistan in 2010. He is currently based in South Africa and recently photographed the riots in Zamdela in January and the anniversary of the Marikana miners’ strike massacre in August. His conversation with James Estrin has been edited.

Q.

Tell me about your show at the festival. How did this come about?

A.

Jean-François Leroy has been amazingly supportive. He had a show for me curated by David Furst [The Times's foreign picture editor] while I was in the hospital, and Jean-François invited me to do another show this year. I spent months and months, while recovering between surgeries, looking at my negatives and going through my body of work. It’s re-looking at your work in a very different way, because obviously I have changed very much in the past few years.

After all that time and going through pretty much every single negative that I have â€" I’ve lost a lot of work, sadly â€" but in the end, the show ended up only being about three countries. I was looking at this body of work, which Greg Marinovich had helped me to edit in several sessions, and it included Iraq, Somalia, Georgia and Sudan â€" pretty much every single country where I shot a decent frame. And when I looked back, the only work that really stood out from the rest was the body of work from South Africa, obviously, and Iraq and Afghanistan.

No irony intended, but those were the three countries that shaped me as a human being. And it was an interesting process of rediscovery.

Q.

How so?

A.

You’re reliving a lot of memories, especially with the South Africa work. Even two decades later, so much of it is still pretty raw. And all of it is in the images, including the day when Ken [Oosterbroek] was killed and Greg [Marinovich] was shot. There are images of all that. It becomes difficult. It becomes really difficult. And I was in a deep funk for the first month of the process.

Joao Silva Zulu women attacked another woman at the entrance of a hostel in Thokoza, South Africa, which housed Inkatha Freedom Party warriors during the escalated violence between them and the African National Congress after the apartheid regime lifted its ban on political parties. Circa 1990.

I decided to start with South Africa because that was my beginning. We’re looking at reams and reams of negatives, some in envelopes, some just lying loose. Negatives, positives. I hadn’t been the greatest when it came to taking care of my physical archive. So it was a complex thing, and of course I changed.

Q.

How have you changed?

A.

There’s been a readjustment, and I’ve come to terms with my new place in the universe, my new role in the universe, because of the physical changes. It’s been complex. As you can imagine, this has been a life-changing event on every single level, and I think that extends to my photographic persona and my professional persona. It’s been a complex little trip.

Q.

So in this exercise of going through your work, really every negative, and in a sense reliving these experiences, what did you learn?

A.

I discovered that I’ve taken a lot of crappy pictures over time.

I discovered that I photographed more dead than the average person. I came across reams and reams of endless corpses â€" faces, people who I have no idea who they are, what their names were â€" I have no clue. In many cases memories are linked to those images; in some cases not.

I learned that I still have a long way to go.

Q.

What do you mean?

A.

Well, I mean, I’m not finished, I’m not done. I still have lots to accomplish. And as you know, I’m back at work. I’ve been running around. This last operation has been successful, so I kind of got back on the bandwagon with [the former South African president Nelson] Mandela. So I’m shooting riots and whatever else comes my way. It’s good to be out and about again. I walk free now. I no longer have a cane. That was the key to shooting pictures freely again. Both hands are free to grab a camera, and that’s just amazing.

It’s also great just to see my name again in the paper.

Joao Silva Residents of Boipatong, South Africa, surrounded a man whom they accused of being an Inkatha Freedom Party supporter. They killed him as the rest of the community was preparing to bury more than 40 residents who had been massacred days earlier by I.F.P. warriors. 1992.

Q.

And what has it been like been shooting again?

A.

Well, it’s been good. It’s been interesting, because I’m discovering my limits. I’m discovering how much mobility I have, where I can go, what I can do. I find myself missing images because I can’t get to a certain event quick enough or an incident quick enough. So you find yourself sitting back a little bit more and having to think about your photography and to pick your moments. But the more kinetic stuff that I’ve covered â€" I’ve covered two riots since I’ve gone back to work, and eight people were killed â€" that’s fast-moving pace.

There were bullets and tear gas. So it’s moving pretty fast, and I’ve been O.K. I’ve managed and I’ve been published â€" the pictures are there. I’ve just been slowed down somewhat. And that’s been the process: just planting my feet again and seeing where I am and how much I can endure. Of course, at the end of those days when I’ve been out working from dawn till dusk, I’m in extreme pain. But until that point, I’m able to sustain and I’m quite mobile and I’m quite surprised.

Q.

When any photographer gets older, you slow down, you figure out how to compensate, how to be smarter.

A.

I think you just find yourself thinking more about what is you’re trying to do in any given moment. There’s always alternate images to the obvious. The obvious image is always there, but not the alternate images. At times, the alternate image is the better image; at times not, of course. It depends on what it is that’s being photographed.

You find your best possible position to stand and thank God you shoot pictures. I think my body and my soul have been yearning to shoot. I’m just basically doing the day-to-day stuff that’s been happening here until I get the opportunity to get back to the States for new legs. But hopefully this last big surgery was it. Hopefully I will be done. I feel strong, I feel good. There’s the pain, but pain is going to be there for a while, I’m told.

Joao Silva A street scene in Kabul during the years of civil war between rival mujahedeen warlords that followed the withdrawal of Soviet forces. 1994.

Q.

You said before that you’ve adjusted to your new role in the universe. What role is that?

A.

I guess my new role is what it always was. Because of the limitations and because of my physical condition, I thought that there might have to be something new. But in the end, my place in the universe is going to be as it always was, just maybe a little bit slower and a little bit more calculated out of necessity. You can’t move as quickly, be it through injury or be it through old age.

I’ve been recovering bits and pieces of my old life. I’ve been dedicating a huge amount of time to my family. As you can imagine, my little family has taken a hell of a hammering as a result, and we’re still dealing with a lot of the fallout. But it’s good.

Q.

In a way, by choosing only these three countries you’ve made this less of a retrospective exhibit and more of an autobiographical one. Can you describe why each of the countries represented in the exhibition are important to you?

A.

They’ve all had their own emotional impact, and they’ve all left their own mark in their own, very different way.

Of course, with Afghanistan, obviously, I lost my legs there. Not only that, I first went to Afghanistan in ’94, during the civil war. So there’s been this long relationship. South Africa, of course, is my adopted country. [Mr. Silva was born in Portugal.]

It was difficult not only covering that kind of conflict in your own country because of the uncertainty that goes along with it, but also I lost lots of best friends. I saw people getting killed in front of me.

The last time I went to Iraq was in 2010, just before I got hurt later in the year. It was a huge bunch of time and experiences and friendships. Friends lost in Iraq â€" all of it leaves a mark. The camera doesn’t falter that much. The camera captures, and that’s where it stops. But it leaves a mark on you, and in my case, very much so.

Too many memories â€" good memories, bad memories. As a photographer, you’re documenting the heroism of others. They’re the heroes, not us. And we’re there to document those moments of glory in their lives, and we are fortunate to be able to do that in many ways. We are fortunate to intrude on people’s lives and be able to document these most incredible, intimate moments.

Q.

So what do you make of Visa Pour l’Image? It’s sort of like a tribal gathering, isn’t it?

A.

Oh, it is. We are very much a tribe. We draw all sorts. If you look through our ranks, we have everything. We have every color, shade, personality. We are, in our souls, amazing people â€" saints and sinners. I mean, we have it all.

Joao Silva for The New York Times On Oct. 23, 2010, Mr. Silva stepped on a land mine while on patrol in Afghanistan. Though critically injured, having lost both legs and sustained severe internal injuries, he continued photographing until he was too weak to hold the camera. These three images were taken just after the explosion.

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