Nachtwey

I've never really been a big admirer of James Nachtwey in the way some photogs regard him as a photo God, but without a doubt, he has made a great number of powerful images in his career thus far.

This afternoon, I finally got down to watching the Nachtwey documentary Don lent me some 2 months back - he's losing patience I know - and parts of it really disturbed me.
When he told me it was worth a watch, I didn't expect it to be this much of an emotional stir.

And so I feel compelled to transcipt some of the things that was shared on the film here, just for my own benefit if nothing else.

"In a war, the normal codes of our civilized behavior are suspended. It wld be unthinkable in so-called normal life to go into someone’s home where the family is grieving over the death of a loved one and spend long moments photographing them …it simply wldn’t be done. Those pictures cld not have been made unless I was accepted by the people I’m photographing…it’s simply impossible to photograph moments such as those without the complicity of the people I’m photographing, without the fact that they welcomed me, that they accepted me, that they wanted me to be there. They understand that a stranger who’s come there with a camera to show the rest of the world what is happening to them gives them a voice in the outside world that they otherwise wldn’t have.

Why photograph war? Is it possible to put an end to the form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography? The proportions of that notion seemed ridiculously out of balance, yet that very idea has motivated me. For me, the strength of photography lies in it’s ability to invoke a sense of humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war. And if it’s use well, it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote to war. In a way, if an individual assumes the risk of placing himself in the middle of a war in order to communicate to the rest of the world what is happening, he’s trying to negotiate for peace. Perhaps that’s the reason why those in charge of perpetuating a war do not like to have photographers around. It has occurred to me that if anyone can be there just once to see for themselves of what unspeakable pain is caused by the impact of a super bullet or how a jagged piece of shrapnel can whip someone’s leg off, then they wld 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 create pictures powerful enough to overcome the deluding 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.

The worse thing is to feel that as a photographer I’m benefiting from someone else’s tragedy. This idea haunts me. It’s something I have to reckon with everyday because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be over taken by personal ambition, I wld’ve sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person’s predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other, and to that extent, I can accept myself. "