Critical Biography of
James Nachtwey
Since his first foreign assignment covering the IRA hunger strike in Northern Ireland, photojournalist
James Nachtwey has devoted himself to documenting war, famine, genocide, and other critical social issues in hopes that his
images will provoke real change. “His goal is to bear witness, because someone must, and his pictures, devised to infuriate
and move people to action, are finally about us, and our concern or lack of it, at least as much they are about him and his
obvious talents” (Kimmelman 1).
As a student in the 1960s, Nachtwey was profoundly moved by
documentary images. In his speech at the 2007 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, Nachtwey said the following:
The war in Vietnam was raging and the Civil Rights Movement
was underway and pictures had a powerful influence on me. Our political and military leaders were telling us one thing and
photographers were telling another. I believed the photographers and so did millions of other Americans. Their images fueled
resistance to the war and to racism. They not only recorded history, they helped change the course of history. Their pictures
became part of our collective consciousness, and as consciousness evolved into a shared sense of conscious, change became
not only possible, but inevitable. I saw that the free flow of information represented by journalism, specifically visual
journalism, can bring into focus both the benefits and the cost of political policies. It can give credit to sound decision-making,
adding momentum to success. In the face of poor political judgment or political inaction, it becomes a kind of intervention,
assessing the damage and asking us to reassess our behavior. It puts a human face on issues that from afar can appear abstract
or ideological or monumental in their global impact. What happens at ground level, far from the halls of power, happens to
ordinary citizens, one by one. And I understood that documentary photography has the ability to interpret events from their
point of view. It gives a voice to those who would otherwise not have a voice.
It was this ability to give a voice to the voiceless that ultimately motivated Nachtwey to become a photojournalist.
After Nachtwey graduated from Dartmouth College with degrees in art history and political science, he had a series of odd
jobs including serving as a merchant marine, an apprentice news film editor, and a truck driver, acquiring skills that would
prove useful in his chosen occupation. During this time he began teaching himself photography. He also paid close attention,
and learned from the work of other photojournalists, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gene Smith, Josef Koudelka, and Don McCullin.
Nachtwey landed his first job as a photographer in 1976,
working for a local New Mexico newspaper. Four years later, finally convinced he was ready to be a war photographer, he moved
to New York City.
In 1981, Nachtwey
traveled to Belfast to cover the Irish Republican Army (IRA) hunger strike. Ten IRA prisoners were in the process of starving
themselves to death to protest the conditions inside the jail. The reaction on the streets was violent confrontation. “I
saw that the frontlines of contemporary wars are not on isolated battlefields, but right where people live,” Nachtwey
says.
During the 1980s, Nachtwey spent a lot of time in Central America, which was engulfed
in civil war. And just as in Northern Ireland, the civilian population was caught up in the conflict.
“In the 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia fractured
along ethnic fault lines and civil war broke out between Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia,” says Nachtwey. At the same time
in South Africa, after Nelson Mandela’s prison release, the black population was liberated from the chains of apartheid.
Nachtwey was welcomed in the black townships in South Africa and says he was impressed by their hospitality andopenness.
Elsewhere in Africa, famine in Somalia and southern Sudan
was used as a weapon of mass destruction, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, slowly and painfully.
In 1994, Nachtwey returned to South Africa. He says witnessing
the inauguration of Nelson Mandela in 1994 election was the most uplifting story of Nachtwey career. Sadly, “the danger
inherent in Nachtwey's work became especially apparent during his assignment in South Africa, when a group of journalists
was fired upon. Nachtwey was attempting to aid his friend and colleague Ken Oosterbroek, who had been shot, when a bullet
came so close to Nachtwey that it parted his hair. Oosterbroek had been fatally wounded” (Whitney).
After spending nearly a year in South Africa, Nachtwey
traveled to Rwanda. He described the experience as “taking the express elevator to hell.” Nachtwey said that this
time, perhaps confused or discouraged by the military disaster in Somalia, the International community remained silent, and
“somewhere around 800, 000 people were slaughtered by their own countrymen, sometimes their own neighbors, using farm
implements as weapons.”
Though
he continues to document war, Nachtwey also devotes a great deal of his time and energy to documenting other social issues
such as Romania’s lost children, India’s “Untouchables,” the effects of Industrial pollution and Agent
Orange, homeless youth in Indonesia, and heroin addicts in Pakistan. When he is unable to get any of the news publications
he usually works for interested in the critical social issues he wants to cover, he goes on his own steam, without an assignment.
Nachtwey paid his own way to Somalia to cover the famine and to Romania to cover the orphanages for “incurables.”
Thanks to Nachtwey, both stories got the mainstream media coverage they so desperately needed.
In 1998, Nachtwey traveled to Indonesia to examine the extreme poverty in
a country that was on its way towards modernization. During the rule of President Soeharto, “Indonesia suffered from
the Asian financial and economic crisis, accompanied by the worst drought in 50 years and falling prices for oil, gas, and
other commodity exports ... the rupiah depreciated in value, inflation increased significantly, and capital flight accelerated.
Demonstrators, initially led by students, called for Soeharto's resignation. Amid widespread civil unrest, Soeharto resigned
on May 21, 1998” (“Background Note: Indonesia”).
The conditions of poverty Nachtwey documented in Indonesia were hardly an isolated occurrence. “For many
throughout the postcolonial world, the struggle to enter the modern global economy has resulted in more extreme poverty, deteriorating
public health, and an escalation of armed conflict” (Gourevitch 56). As is almost always the case, the children suffer
most. “The homeless, glue-sniffing street children James Nachtwey found and photographed in a Jakarta train station
are hardly an anomalous phenomenon of some Indonesian netherworld. Children like them are ubiquitous throughout the urban
slums of Asia, Africa, and Latin America—the lost souls heaved up and stranded by massive social and political transformations”
(Gourevitch 56).
Nachtwey’s “Homeless
in Jakarta” depicts four young homeless boys sleeping on the hard-tiled floor of a Jakarta train station, as a businessman
in dark trousers hurries to catch his train, briefcase in hand, completely unfazed by the boys. Barefoot and vulnerable, the
boys lay horizontally, like discarded carcasses. Lured by the wealth of modern cities, these boys moved to Jakarta from the
countryside. They ended up beggars, thieves, and drug addicts living in a train station. “They were truly outcasts,
surviving on the narrowest of margins, and as such were virtually invisible,” Nachtwey says.
"Homeles in Jakarta"
“Homeless in Jakarta” demonstrates the contrast
between two worlds. A shadow divides the composition in half. On the left, in the light, we see a world of prosperity. On
the right-hand side of the composition, we see a world of poverty, living in the shadows. They are not so different than Romania’s
lost children, tethered to a shared crib or India’s “Untouchables,” scavenging in a waste dump among vultures.
They are invisible, which is why they are Nachtwey’s focus. These children did not create the conditions of their plight.
They are not responsible for the suffering they endure.
“These are not the victims of natural cataclysms, these are the victims of human greed for power, violence,
stupidity, and of man’s destructive impulses. We are our own nightmare even if we pretend to ignore it” (Chalifour
5).
Nachtwey makes it his purpose to see that we don’t ignore the victims of
war, famine, disease, and other critical social injustices. Nachtwey wrote the following about the relevance of photojournalism:
It has occurred to me that if everyone could be there just once to see for themselves what white phosphorous does
to the face of a child or what unspeakable pain is caused by the impact of a single bullet or how a jagged piece of shrapnel
can rip someone's leg off—if everyone could be there to see for themselves the fear and the grief, just one time, then
they would understand that nothing is worth letting things get to the point where that happens to even one person, let alone
thousands. But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there—to show them, to reach out and grab
them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on—to create pictures powerful enough
to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference—to protest and by the
strength of that
protest to make others protest.
He has been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984 and
regularly has his work published in the form of photo essays. He was associated with Black Star photo agency from 1980 until
1985 and was a member of the Magnum photo agency from 1986 until 2001. In 2001, he became one of the founding members of the
VII photo agency. The agency, named for its original seven members, “seeks to compile and disseminate photography of
diverse contemporary social, political, and environmental crises and conflicts” (Winston 48).
Nachtwey overcomes
whatever technical, physical, and emotional obstacles photojournalists encounter in fieldwork to produce compositions so strong
they almost look staged. He aims for a transparency that makes us aware of what he is photographing rather than allowing us
to get hung up on appreciating his art. He doesn’t care how we receive his images—only that we be made aware of
critical social injustices. For this self-proclaimed “anti-war photographer,” content always comes before aesthetics.
But some critics accuse Nachtwey of creating aesthetic
wonders rather than an anti-war campaign. "There was sometimes a feeling when Nachtwey was shooting in color that the
pictures were almost too pretty, that the overall effect of his mastery of technique might detract from the horror of the
subject...but Nachtwey in recent years has turned almost entirely to black and white photography. The more austere medium
perfectly suits his strict moral vision, forcing the viewer to confront man's inhumanity in the last, post-cold war decade
of the century." (Kifner).
Nachtwey’s
talents in photography and humanitarian work have been widely recognized. He received numerous awards such as “the Robert
Capa Gold Medal (five times), the World Press Photo Award twice, Magazine Photographer of the Year (six times), the International
Center of Photography Infinity Award (three times), the Leica Award twice, the Bayeaux Award for War Correspondents (twice),
the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award, the Canon Photo essayist Award, and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Grant in Humanistic Photography”
(“James Nachtwey” 1).
In
addition to his numerous awards, Nachtwey was also the subject of the 2002 Oscar Nominated Documentary “The War Photographer”
by Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei. The film follows Nachtwey closely for two years—in Kosovo, The Balkans (June 1999),
Jakarta, Indonesia (May/June 1999), Ramallah, Palestine (October/November 2000), Kawah Ijen, A Sulfur Mine, in East Java,
Indonesia (October 1999) and in New York City and Hamburg.
In the film, Nachtwey describes his artistic journey:
I had to learn, in taking
pictures, how to develop a personal vision, how to express my own feelings about it, and in order to do that I had to get
in touch with my own feelings. Through photography, through the discipline of the frame, I learned about the world, it became
the way in which I discovered the world and it also became the way in which I discovered myself.
Nachtwey has never strayed from the medium of photography, nor has his philosophy
of content over aesthetics. He shoots both black and white photographs and color photographs, using Canon products almost
exclusively (Cellini 1). “Afghanistan was my first large-scale digital story. It was an odd combination of medieval
living conditions and cutting-edge technology,” said Nachtwey in an interview with Joe Cellini. “I learned on
the job, sink or swim” (Cellini 2).
Nachtwey describes his preference for film in his interview with Joe Cellini:
I still much prefer to have my
originals on film. It’s a matter of quality, but also a better way for me to edit and eventually store my images. However,
even though I like to shoot film whenever possible, my pictures now always become digitized through scanning. I use the computer
to scan, tone and transmit every bit as much as I would if I was shooting my originals on a flashcard. (Cellini 2).
While Nachtwey occasionally exhibits his news images
in gallery shows internationally, the bulk of his work is seen in magazines and newspapers. The primary function of Nechtwey’s
photographs has always been and will continue to be in mass-circulation magazines and newspapers during the time that the
events are happening. In an interview with David Cruickshank for Salon, Nachtwey says,
“I want them to become part of people's daily dialogue and create public awareness, public opinion that can help bring
pressure for change. That's the first and most important use of my work. A secondary use is to become an archive, entered
into our collective memory, so that these events are never forgotten” (2).
His books, which include Deeds
of War (1989), Civil Wars (1999), Inferno (2000), Rethink (2004), War (2004), and Democratic Republic of Congo: Forgotten
War (2006), were made in a book format so that these images would seep into our collective consciousness. The late Richard
Avedon called his book Inferno “the most painful and beautiful book in the history of photography” (Kimmelman
1).
Nachtwey's work from around the world and through the years has a consistent story, showing us that something
needs to be done. We can watch the news to get a basic idea of what’s happening in the world, but Nachtwey’s images
provide depth. Photojournalist Robert Capa famously said, “If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close
enough.” No one could argue that Nachtwey doesn’t get close enough. Whether we like it or not, Nachtwey forces
us to look closely at the horrors man has made and we’re better for it.
Works Cited
“Background Note: Indonesia.” U.S.
Department of State. 11 Mar. 2008 <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2748.htm>.
Chalifour, Bruno. “On James Nachtwey and VII: From Inferno to War:
a Few Considerations on James Nachtwey, VII, and War Photography.” Afterimage May-June 2004: 4-5.
Gourevitch, Philip. “Ghost Children of Big Mango.” Mother Jones
May-June 2005: 56-63.
Kifner, John “Pictures
from hell”. Columbia Journalism Review. Jul/Aug 2000. FindArticles.com. 8 Mar. 2008. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3613/is_200007/ai_n8903639
Kimmelman, Michael. “World's Cruelty and Pain,
Seen in an Unblinking Lens.” Rev. of “the Sacrafice”, by James Nachtwey. The New York Times 28 Mar. 2007.
“Nachtwey, James.” Britannica Book of the
Year, 1996. 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 13 Mar. 2008 <http://0-www.search.eb.com.library.scad.edu:80/eb/article-9111948>.
“Nachtwey, James.” Encyclopedia Britannica.
2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 13 Mar. 2008 <http://0-www.search.eb.com.library.scad.edu:80/eb/article-9435221>.
Nachtwey, James. “I Have a Dream.” TED. TED
2007. Monterey Conference Center, Monterey, California. 8 Mar. 2007. 10 Mar. 2008 <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/84>.
Nachtwey, James. Interview with Joe Cellini. Apple. 8 Mar. 2008 <http://www.apple.com/ca/pro/profiles/nachtwey/>.
Nachtwey, James. Interview with Douglas Cruickshank.
Salon. 10 Apr. 2000. 22 Feb. 2008 <http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2000/04/10/inferno/print.html>.
War Photographer. Dir. Christian Frei. Perf. James Nachtwey,
Christiane Amanpour, Hans-Hermann Klare. DVD. First Run Features, 2001.
Winston, Helena. “VII: Hasted Hunt Gallery, New York.” Rev. of VII, by James
Nachtwey. ArtUS Mar.-Apr. 2006: 48.
