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James
Nachtwey grew up in Massachusetts and studied Art History and Political
Science at Dartmouth College. He has worked aboard ships in the Merchant
Marine, and while teaching himself photography, he was an apprentice
news film editor and a truck driver.
In 1976, he started work as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico,
and in 1981got his first foreign assignment covering civil strife in
Northern Ireland during the IRA hunger strike. Since then, Nachtwey
has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social
issues.
Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984
and has worked on extensive photographic essays in all over Central
America, Europe, Africa and Asia. A winner of many prestigious awards,
his book publications include Inferno, a collection of his photography
spanning his career.
Nachtwey is based in New York, but typically spends eight months of
the year on the road.
Images are unrelated
to words and in that way are closer to immediate experience. I think
images pass through the part of your brain where words are formed and
hit something more visceral. And then when you begin to think about
it, and contemplate on the emotional impact of the image, you begin
to apply words and ask questions, and then language forms afterwards.
We know the earliest history of mankind through cave paintings. And
I think in the future, maybe hundreds or thousands of years from now,
when people are looking back on the history of our own times they'll
use photographs to determine what happened.
It's a matter of being sensitive to the people you're photographing.
They're the ones who express it. You're the vehicle for their expression
and you have to perceive it and then use the camera to record it. And
a lot of it is a matter of how you approach people as well. If you approach
people with respect and you're not threatening, they seem to understand
why you're there they're more liable to allow you into their lives.
When I went to the orphanages in Romania, it didn't test so much my
faith in the value of information and the power of photography as it
did my very faith in humanity. They (the children) were simply incarcerated.
The ones in the worst condition weren't going to get out of there and
they had done nothing to deserve it. Their only mistake was in being
born in the first place, and this caused me some moments of despair.
I realized that finally that there was no value in giving up. That never
solved anyone's problems, and that I should continue and put my faith
in the people outside to at least relieve the immediate suffering of
these children. And that's what happened.
I don't have a family of my own, but I have a mother and two brothers
and I have friends. I have familiar surroundings and that's home but
it's also wherever I happen to be. I've got friends wherever I go. By
now, there's a network of colleagues and friends. We have comradeship,
and friendship and we make wherever we are home. It's kind of a band
of gypsies in a way.
Once you enter a war zone you're vulnerable. Anything can happen. It's
unpredictable, it's extremely violent, and people with a lot more experience
than you have are going down all around you. So you can go down as well.
And you have to understand that going into it. You have to go into it
with your eyes open -- and there are many journalists who are willing
to go that far.
People in many fields are willing to put their life on the line for
what they believe in. Not only journalists. Priests. School teachers.
Labour organizers. Firemen. Policemen. Soldiers. I mean there are many
people willing to put their lives on the line and there always have
been.
My sense of wonder and sense of outrage have not diminished. I don't
take things for granted. I'm not jaded about what I see. I don't consider
conditions that are unacceptable to become acceptable because they're
seen frequently, or they seem to become the norm. I don't accept them
as the norm, and I've never been able to and therefore it's unavoidable
that I become angry.
There are many, many powerful emotions, and rather than let them paralyze
me or become negative, I try and put them to use and put them into my
pictures.
I feel that I have not gotten to the bottom of photography. I think
I've evolved since the day I began and I'm still evolving. I don't think
I've peaked yet. I think there's still a lot to learn. I'm continually
being challenged and inspired by work of my colleagues, and to me there's
no end to it. It's something that I haven't been able to outgrow and
I'm not sure I ever will. It's much bigger than I am.
My book Inferno was published by Phaidon in 1999. The inscription
at the front of the book is a quotation from Dante's Inferno and it's
the sign that's over the entrance at the gateways to Hell. 'Through
me is the way to the sorrowful city. Through me is the way to join the
lost people.' And I very consciously left off the words, 'Abandon hope
all ye who enter here'.
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