If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not good enough. - Robert Capa
Christian Frei's War Photographer, nominated for an Academy Award for best Documentary Feature in 2001, profiles James Nachtwey, an American-born, award-winning photojournalist whose career path has drawn him to some of the world's most destructive conflicts, wars, and famines. Frei's documentary mixes interviews with Nachtwey himself, his co-workers and friends, Nachtwey at work with the help of equally courageous, and unsung, video cameramen, a micro-camera pinned to his jacket that helps to create a sense of immediacy with Nachtwey as he takes his photographs, and Nachtwey's photographs, most of which are in black and white. Nachtwey's instantly recognizable photographs are nothing short of revelatory, combining aesthetic precision with a clear-eyed empathy for his subjects, many of whom have been caught on film in private, intimate moments of emotional distress and suffering. Nachtwey has received the Robert Capa Gold Medal (five times); the World Press Photo Award (twice); the Magazine Photographer of the Year (seven times); the International Center of Photography Infinity Award (three times); and the Bayeaux Award for War Correspondents (twice). Nachtwey is, as his long list of awards suggests, a perfectionist, disciplined by both his subject matter, and his desire to honor his subject matter with truthfulness, and, as he describes it, disciplined by the limits inherent in a frame of film.
Nachtwey began his career as a (self-taught) newspaper photographer for a New Mexico daily in 1976. The crucible of the Vietnam War led him to photography as a life-long vocation. Nachtwey was moved by the influence photojournalists had on public opinion, and later, the anti-war movement. Simply, Nachtwey wanted to combine a deeply held sense of personal mission with a finely honed social conscience. He also wanted to witness and participate in history as it unfolded. In 1980, Nachtwey moved to New York City to obtain work as a freelance magazine photographer. After only a year, he found himself in Northern Ireland, covering the ongoing violence between Catholic and Protestant groups. His career has subsequently led him to violent conflicts and their aftermath in Nicaragua, the Balkans, Chechnya, Indonesia, the Palestinian territories and famine in Africa, including Rwanda. As the list of countries indicates, throughout his decades-long career Nachtwey has consistently allied himself with the victims of social and political injustices, often at grave personal risk (as one friend, Des Wright, a video cameramen for CNN International grimly remarks, there are no old war photographers).
War Photographer opens in 1999, in war-ravaged Kosovo, amidst bombed-out ruins, with Nachtwey following and photographing local residents as they return to their homes. Several of the women are relieved to be back home, but at the site of their ruined homes, they stifle sobs and walk around their homes in stunned disbelief. Later, Nachtwey witnesses the unearthing of a makeshift grave, as a local man quietly holds a framed photograph of his son in his hands. The men return the body in a flag-draped coffin to the village, which, in turn, leads to another, deeper outbreak of mourning. The mother's declarative statement, “My son has arrived,” in any another context, would bring happiness. Here, the opposite holds true. Nachtwey stays close, capturing the scene with a rawness and immediacy that borders on the voyeuristic and the exploitative. These are private, intimate moments, moments usually left unrecorded by camera or video. Nachtwey answers this potential criticism by noting that his presence, either implicitly or explicitly, is, at minimum, tolerated for a fundamental reason: his subjects are well aware of the power of the image to move and shape international public opinion. Nachtwey also claims to pursue and photograph his subjects with compassion always foremost in his mind.
Christian Frei then shifts to Hamburg, Germany, where Nachtwey's editors at STERN magazine discuss and appraise his photography for a photo-essay with cold, clinical detachment. That detachment is necessary, given the subject matter of the photo-essay, “worldwide horror.” One editor remarks on the need for the greatest possible visceral impact on the reader, which can only be accomplished through publishing the most graphic photographs submitted by Nachtwey, including corpses being dumped into mass graves, corpses piled high, left unburied, due to the shallow volcanic soil, two men solemnly mourning at a makeshift grave, and a battlefield surgery operation, apparently administered with minimal (if any) anesthetic. Nachtwey's editors want to shock, provoke, move, and compel action from their audience.
But there's a deeper, unacknowledged problem at work here: their audience, long exposed to violent graphic images, can and do become immune to the effects of those images, which in turn requires either a different approach to the material or a change in scale in the presentation of that material. Nachtwey is well aware of this conundrum, but has nevertheless chosen to continue working, to continue giving voice to the voiceless. As Nachtwey states, with new wars, new conflicts, new victims emerge whose experiences need to be shared with those in the West. And in these conflicts, genocide doesn't come from a bomb, released from a distant airplane in the sky, but up close and personal, face-to-face, with guns, knives, and machetes. On camera, Nachtwey struggles with the enormity and the depths of suffering caused by these events, but in a rare moment of doubt, finds himself unable to understand the fear and hatred that leads to war and genocide. Nachtwey does offer one telling insight drawn from his experiences in the field: war negates humanity. He is too self-effacing to admit, however, that his photography aims to restore that lost or stolen humanity back to the victims of war.
Nachtwey has seen, first-hand, the results of these new forms of genocide in the Balkans and in Rwanda, where the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis by the Hutus was followed by widespread famine and disease, as two million Hutus, fearing reprisals, fled into Uganda and Tanzania. In the refugee camps, tens of thousands of Hutus died from outbreaks of cholera. Nachtwey soon realized that many of these refugees were likely responsible for some of the Tutsi deaths. Even with that in mind, Nachtwey refused to judge these refugees by their previous actions, and instead approached them as he would have other victims of war and injustice. With all that Nachtwey has seen over his career, however, Rwanda remains a singular, searing experience for him, and through his photographs, for his audience as well.
War Photographer then follows Nachtwey into two other “hot spots,” during the violent uprising in Jakarta, Indonesia that resulted in the resignation of Suharto, Indonesia's leader in 1998, and in Ramallah, Palestine in 2000 during the second intifada. In both cases, Nachtwey takes serious personal risks to obtain his photographs. In Indonesia, he followed a running mob that had already killed several men (presumably supporters of the government), but when the mob cornered another man, Nachtwey risked his own life to beg for the man's life. He failed to save the man, but felt obligated to attempt to save his life. Unlike other war photographers, Nachtwey feels intimately involved with his subjects, and bound up with that compassion is a profound sense of obligation toward them. In Ramallah, Nachtwey stands (and squats) with young Palestinian men as they attack the Israeli military, who themselves are heavily armed, with slingshots and rocks. For his close proximity to the Palestinians, Nachtwey is teargassed.
Frei's documentary concludes with two other segments that highlight Nachtwey's interest in documenting social injustice around the world. In one segment, he follows a double-amputee, Sumarno in Indonesia, who's forced to beg in order to support his family. Unable to even afford ramshackle housing near a railroad track, he and his family live on cardboard boxes in the gravel between train tracks. Nachtwey also documents Indonesians who work at hazardous sulfur mine. Even with his face covered, the heat, fumes, and yellow fog soon overwhelm Nachtwey. The men at the mine will likely become ill and die from the sulfurous fumes, but the choices, at least for them, are far worse, starvation and homelessness. The documentary ends with the men disappearing into the yellow fog. Will they be remembered? Will their government or international institutions address their hazardous working conditions? Nachtwey doesn't pretend to have the answers to these questions, but his photographs function to raise those questions, leaving the ultimate responsibility for obtaining the answers with the audience.
© Mel Valentin, 23rd October, 2004
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