During the last several decades, critically acclaimed photographer Les Stone has chronicled the human cost of conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Kosovo, Liberia, Cambodia and Haiti, among other war zones. The winner of several World Press Photo Awards and Picture of the Year Awards, Stone vaulted to prominence in 1989 when he photographed the savage, bloody beating of the newly elected Vice President of Panama by thugs of Generalissimo Manuel Noriega. The image revealed the true nature of Noriega’s repressive regime. Since then, Stone has covered stories often ignored by the mainstream media, including the deadly legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the plight of Iraqi Kurds fleeing the first Gulf War, and the deployment of child-soldiers in Africa.

Les Stone’s work straddles the worlds of photojournalism and fine art photography. His images are powerful not only because they bring to our attention important and often overlooked people and events but because they do so in a visually arresting way. Many of his photographs seem so improbable that they could be mistaken for either set-ups or manipulated images. The Iraq food drop photograph doesn’t seem as though it can possibly be real—the scale of the military helicopter, the painterly mountains in the background, the expressions on the people’s faces. In Stone’s photograph of a Voodoo ritual in Haiti two figures partially immersed in a mud pool and completely covered in the deep brown mud appear to be figures cast in bronze, a statue resembling Michelangelo’s Pietà.

Stone’s work has appeared in the pages of National Geographic, Time, Life, Paris Match, Stern, Fortune, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Mother Jones, Panoramma, Geo, US News and World Report, as well in The Arab-Israeli Conflict (Bedford Books), Haiti, Dangerous Crossroads (South End Press) and A Day in the Life of the United States Armed Forces (Harper Collins). Stone is currently working on a long-term project on Voodoo in Haiti and is working with the Visionproject.org on healthcare issues in the US. This will be the first gallery exhibition of Stone’s photographs.