At Home in the No-Go Zone

As an aspiring artist visiting new York City in the late '60s, Sydney-born George Gittoes had his 15 minutes with the emperor of pop art. "I can remember having a discussion with Andy Warhol," he recalls, "and I said, 'As far as I'm concerned, more people watch the news than anything else. To me, news is pop art.' And Andy agreed." In the decades since, Gittoes, 56, has pushed that concept beyond the usual 15 minutes of fame.

Traveling to many of the world's trouble spots, the artist has documented the atrocities of Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda in a hyper-real...