James Nachtwey

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James Nachtwey 2011

James Nachtwey (born March 14, 1948 in Syracuse , New York ) is an American documentary photographer , war correspondent and photojournalist .

Nachtwey is one of the most important representatives of contemporary documentary photography, especially war photography .

biography

Nachtwey was born in Syracuse , New York, and grew up in Leominster , Massachusetts . He studied art history and political science at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire from 1966 to 1970 . After this time he worked on merchant ships and as a truck driver; around 1972 he decided - under the influence of the student movement and the Vietnam War - to become a photographer . He pursued this goal for almost ten years, but initially without publishing pictures; During this “preparation time”, Nachtwey taught himself photography by studying photo books and working in the darkroom; the photographers whose work he studied include Henri Cartier-Bresson , William Eugene Smith , Josef Koudelka and Don McCullin .

First he got to know the everyday life of a reporter as an assistant to a news editor at the US television company NBC in New York . From 1976 onwards he photographed regional events in New Mexico for the first time ; from 1980 he worked as a freelance photographer in New York City.

His first photo report was made in 1981 in Northern Ireland , where he documented the unrest in Belfast . Since then, Nachtwey has been working almost exclusively in the respective crisis areas of the world under the motto of the "(eye) witness":

"I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated. "

- with these words Nachtwey welcomes visitors to his homepage .

According to his own statements, what drives him is the search for an antidote to war and the hope of being able to change something.

In the 1980s he then traveled as a documentary photographer to Latin American countries ( El Salvador , Nicaragua , Guatemala , Brazil, etc.), the Middle East ( Lebanon , Israel and the occupied territories (West Bank), Kurdistan, etc.) and Africa (Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa (1994) et al).

During these years, Nachtwey was in a relationship with Christiane Breustedt, the then editor-in-chief of the GEO-International magazine series and today's wife of Peter-Matthias Gaede .

This was followed by numerous trips to the area of ​​the former Soviet Union and the countries of the Eastern Bloc such as Bosnia, Romania and Chechnya. A photo documentation of the war was also made in Afghanistan in 1996. In Asia, reports were increasingly being made that dealt with poverty and the living conditions of the local population (Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, South Korea, etc.)

Nachtwey has been under contract with Time Magazine since 1984 ; between 1980 and 1985 he cooperated with the New York agency Black Star . Between 1986 and 2001 James Nachtwey was a member of the Magnum photo agency ; From 2001 he worked for Agency VII , of which he is a founding member and which he left again in 2011.

Nachtwey lives on the outskirts of Manhattan , within sight of the Brooklyn Bridge . As an eyewitness to the terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 , he followed the collapse of the towers and the rescue work at Ground Zero with his camera.

Nachtwey was wounded many times during his work, for example on December 10, 2003 in Iraq during a report by Time Magazine on the subject of "Person of the Year".

He is under contract with the New Yorker and has meanwhile also photographed commercial commissions such as the Cannes Film Festival .

Methodology and technology

James Nachtwey photographs according to the maxim of being as close as possible to the subject; he is "within a rifle butt's reach, sitting upright, his finger poised above the shutter" (Chris Wright). Nachtwey avoids telephoto lenses and spectacular shooting positions; Instead, he prefers wide-angle lenses and is at eye level with the subjects he has photographed, he goes “close”, according to Robert Capas - actually in the figurative sense - “golden rule” of photojournalism : “If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough. "

Nachtwey's methodology has changed over the course of three decades as a photographer; in the 1980s he was still trying to find archetypal individual images that could compress complex events into a single image. Today, however, he mainly works in series that also show the context, and only rarely in single pictures.

He photographs both digitally and with analog film, but prefers negative film. However, digital photos are becoming increasingly necessary for him in order to be able to meet tight deadlines for commissioned work. However, Nachtwey emphasizes the paramount importance of the trained eye over technology: "Documentary photography and photojournalism are based on perception, not on technology."

Effect, meaning and criticism

Nachtwey is currently one of the most successful war correspondents ; his pictures are published in numerous newspapers, magazines and magazines. Nachtwey feels obliged to concerned photography and his pictures show compassion for the victims of war and social injustice; he is increasingly interested in poverty and socially critical issues. He claims that "a journalist who goes to a war zone practices the highest form of journalism". In his view, the press has the ability to influence events effectively; War reports should therefore not entertain or only inform, but rather "touch instincts and drive politicians to action".

However, his work is also controversial. Richard B. Woodward criticizes in The Village Voice that Nachtwey depicts the horror of war and death as an "aesthetic miracle"; Nachtwey is just as anti-war as the fashion photographer Herb Ritts is anti-fashion and Nachtwey - in contrast to Robert Capa - has no concern. He accuses the photographer of satisfying the “appetite” of the sensation-loving audience for increasingly gruesome images and thereby pleasing himself in the role of the “saint”.

In the context of the uprising in Syria, a “benevolent” Vogue article (published in February 2011) about the Assad family with the title “A Rose in the Desert” caused confusion, as the article only became known to human life after the beginning of the conflict and there were also dead journalists to complain about. In the article, the ruling family and especially Bashar al-Assad's wife Asma were portrayed positively (“glamorous, young and very chic”, it said: “A slender, long-legged beauty with a polished, analytical mind”). The article was illustrated with pictures of the Assad family by James Nachtweys. The article disappeared from the Vogue website.

plant

Nachtwey's work has been published, exhibited and awarded many times.

Exhibitions

Selection of some exhibitions:

Book publications (selection)

  • 2001: L'Occhio Testimone
  • 1999: Inferno (Phaidon Press; ISBN 0-7148-3815-2 ) - “the most beautifully photographed book about death” (Boston Globe) ; 480 large format black and white images
  • 1999: Civil Wars
  • 1997: Ground Level
  • 1989: Deeds of War (Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-54152-3 ) - photographs a. a. from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Lebanon, the West Bank, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland. Color images.

Movie

The author and director Christian Frei shot the documentary War Photographer about the work of James Nachtwey (Switzerland 2001, 96 minutes, 35 mm, Dolby Stereo), who was nominated for the 2001 Academy Award in the category “ Best Documentary Feature ” has been.

Awards, prizes and honors

  • Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society
  • Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Arts .

Web links

Commons : James Nachtwey  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. no receipt on http://www.blackstar.com
  2. Archived copy ( memento of the original from October 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / flaremag.de
  3. Archived copy ( memento of the original dated December 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nimg.sulekha.com
  4. Article from the Village Voice (English) http://www.villagevoice.com/2000-06-06/news/to-hell-and-back/
  5. Article at Spiegel Online http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/syrien-assad-liess-image-in-medien-in-usa-mit-pr-agentur-aufpolieren-a-838356.html