"How many nameless dead bodies have I stepped over?"

Memphis photojournalist Robert King asks himself that dark rhetorical question in the documentary "Shooting Robert King," which makes its local debut Thursday, on the opening night of the 12th annual Indie Memphis Film Festival at Malco's Studio on the Square.

Robert King on the war frontline for the first time in Bosnia 1993. The Memphis photographer is the subject of the documentary "Shooting Robert King."

In Chechnya in 1997 filming "Shooting Robert King" are director Richard Parry (right) and producer Vaughan Smith.

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Born and now based here, King, 40, is perhaps unsung in his hometown, but his photo credit is familiar to editors at Time, Newsweek, USA Today, The New York Times and the other publications that have published his harrowing front-line pictures from conflicts in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Rwanda and Iraq. (Closer to home, King angered McNairy County officials by snapping exclusive jailhouse photos of murder suspect Mary Winkler that appeared in People magazine in 2007.)

Despite the danger of his profession, "I think it's a misconception that we're adrenaline junkies," King said. "We do it for real causes. We're there to prevent people from being revisionists of history."

The risk of battlefield photography is not just from stray bullets but from those who want to control the flow of information. "Before digital, we were the ones that were bringing back -- I don't want to go so far as to say the truth of the battle, but an honest record of events. So if you're a commander committing genocide, you want to wipe out that record."

The son of Vance Willey and noted music promoter John King (a co-founder of Ardent Records), the eager but naive Robert King headed to Sarajevo in 1993 to pursue a career as a war photographer. He had his cameras, but otherwise was ill-prepared; the first flak jacket he bought was bright white, "and when you have a white flak jacket, you kind of stand out -- you become more of a target."

A wise-guy veteran photographer who meets King early in the movie tells him: "I don't mean this in a bad way at all, but I'm not sure you've got the aura, the aura of luck that war photographers or war cameramen that I know of have." Replies King, who is either too green to take offense or too sly to show it: "I can't read auras."

Some 15 years in the making, "Shooting Robert King" (titled "Blood Trail" when it had its world premiere 13 months ago at the Toronto International Film Festival) began with a chance 1993 meeting at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo between King and British filmmakers Richard Parry and Vaughan Smith. (Smith will join King in Memphis for the screenings of the film.)

"We wanted to try and make a film about the real underbelly of war reporting, the photographers and snappers, the people who are rarely credited but take the bullets," said Parry, 42, in a recent phone interview from his home in London.

Parry said the filmmakers focused on the then 24-year-old King -- an affable-seeming man who resembles Jeff Daniels -- because he was "such a character, he was in dungarees and having a shot (of liquor) at 10 o'clock in the morning, so I really took to him." Plus, King was "very candid. ... Most journalists, they pretend they're not scared when they are scared, and so on, but Robert was very honest."

That first year in Sarajevo, King said, "I sold only one picture, but it was on the front page of the (London-based) Guardian. That's not gonna pay your rent, but the experience was vast -- getting shot at and getting robbed and having guns put in your face and being betrayed by different alliances and networking with journalists..."

Parry, the credited director of the film, and Smith, the producer, reconnected with King several times over the next decade and a half. The movie presents the arc of King's life and career, as he evolves from a green "freelance hack" trying to prove himself into a reckless veteran -- "drowning my moments of clarity in war, wine, women and drugs," he now says -- and, finally, into a respected shooter who appears to have found happiness with his Russian wife, Olga King, a jewelry designer, and his 6-year-old son, Robert Woodfield King Jr.

"I slept with my cameras as a kid," said King, a graduate of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Photography "gave me a real sense of purpose in life, and I needed that -- and come hell or high water, death or tragedy, I'm not gonna let go of it. It's been too good for me, and I've been able to do some good things with it." (King is especially proud that in Rwanda, he not only shot pictures but drove trucks that ferried refugee orphans to safety.)

Parry said the movie explores "the war within and the war without at the same time." Says King, in the film: "I found that the war zone accompanies me wherever I go."

Said Parry: "There is a parallel within any of us, there is a drive within all of us to go to such dangerous places..." But most people restrict such encounters to rubbernecking at automobile accidents, whereas King, in the movie's most gruesome sequence, picks up a video camera to shoot the aftermath of a suicide bomber's bloody work in 2004 in Karbala, Iraq.

Early in the movie, the young King proclaims: "I was put on the world as a messenger to convey a message of, you know, human suffering." Apparently, that message remains relevant. Near the end of the film, King is asked whether he plans to give up war photography, now that he's a husband and father. He replies: "Why quit now? The whole world's about to turn into complete chaos."

'Shooting Robert King'

Screenings: 7:15 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. Thursday, Malco Studio on the Square, 2105 Court.

Tickets: $8, or $6 for Indie Memphis members. King and producer Vaughan Smith scheduled to attend.

Opening of exhibition of Robert King photographs: 5-7 p.m. Wednesday, Marshall Arts, 639 Marshall Ave., with live music by Jonathan Kirkscey. Exhibition continues from noon to 5 p.m. Oct. 10-11 and Oct. 17. Admission is free.

For advance tickets and more information, visit indiememphis.com.