James Nachtwey, Photojournalist
“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.”
James Nachtwey is one of the best-known and most highly regarded current photojournalists. In 1976 he started work as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico, and in 1980, he moved to New York to begin a career as a freelance magazine photographer. His first foreign assignment was to cover civil strife in Northern Ireland in 1981 during the IRA hunger strike.
Since then, Nachtwey has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues. He has worked on extensive photographic essays in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.
Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time magazine since 1984. However, when certain stories he wanted to cover -- Romanian orphanages and Somali famine -- garnered no interest from magazines, he self-financed trips that resulted in the issues being taken up widely by the media. He is known for getting up close to his subjects, or as he says, “in the same intimate space that the subjects inhabit,” and he passes that sense of closeness on to the viewer. In putting himself in the middle of conflict, James’ intention is to record the truth, to document the struggles of humanity, and with this, to wake people up and stir them to action.
Read about -- and help grant -- James Nachtwey's wish >>
PHOTO CREDIT: James Nachtwey, Self-portrait
