amaing art: 2010

Monday, December 13, 2010

Nachtwey

A famous photojournalist is James Nachtwey. He was speaking to students at the University of Tennessee about the importance of images. He said, “Ultimately, I want my pictures to become a part of our collective memory.” The pictures he took were very graphic. One picture he took was a child with severed limbs, a young Vietnamese boy contorted by the deformatvive effects of warring chemical Agent Orange. All the photographs were in black and withe and of simple composition, but each depicted a story of great complexity, one unobtainable through words alone. A quote he said was “I want to put a human face on situations that would otherwise remain abstract.” photography of his kind is an excellent means of making more realistic the horrors we hear about each day on the news,” said a student. Nachtwey believes that war is a turning point in history and, as a photojournalist, it is his duty to document that contemporary history. Natchwey has been plastering images in the collective mind of society since 1981, when he began documenting conflicts of warring Islamic nations. He helped illustrate the contemporary histories of such countries as Lebanon Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechyna and Somalia. But he documented the attack of 9/11, Nachtwey had a realization. Nachtwey said that ground zero was no different from any other devastation he has covered. He thought he was taking photographs [of the Islamic world], and was covering a different story but he found out that he was covering a single story for more than 20 years. Ever since 9/11 has happened he believes journalism is more important now than ever before. “Journalists have been documenting these conflicts for years, but we never saw how they fit together. We missed the big picture,” he said. “Journalism is absolutely essential. Without it we’d be in the dark. We’d have nothing on which to form an opinion.” The students learned a lot from him and he has a very strong belief about the photos he takes. Each picture he takes is very detailing it also tells a story on what is going on over seas to our troops and it shows the conditions they have to live in. I have heard of him before and I have seen some the pictures he has taken for the Time magazine. They are very graphic. To me he teaches a lot to me in a picture then with words.