A boy wearing red pants hangs upside-down from the gun barrel of a rusted tank, his hand capping the muzzle. It is one of the few images in "James Nachtwey: Photographs" now on view at the Hood Museum of Art with an air of playful grimness; mostly the photographs are simply grim -- in the words of one critic, "beyond tragedy."
Nachtwey '70 has documented the depths of despair and perseverance in war-riddled zones all over the world. The exhibit illuminates the ravaged human spirit in Belfast, Beirut, South Africa, Nicaragua, Bosnia, and Rwanda, among other places perhaps too easily dubbed as "trouble spots."
Nachtwey's photos are titled simply by the location and year they were taken: in "West Beirut, Lebanon, 1983" a dead child, killed by a car bomb at a Muslim hospital is lifted by an impassioned crowd; in "Kunar Valley, Afghanistan, 1986" Muslim fundamentalist guerillas kneel in prayer, rifles ready at their sides; in "San Miguel Province, El Salvador, 1984" a man carries a child-size white coffin on his back.
The first and last portions of the exhibit ignite the imagination by juxtaposing horrific images from different regions of the world. This vision is focused more tightly in location-specific series in the middle. The "Romania" series (1990) details the misery of Romanian orphans, first revealed in 1989 with the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Their wasted bodies and vacant eyes attest to a massive institutional neglect that made the world shudder.
Just when it seemed that Nachtwey's photographs couldn't provoke more sadness, the "Rwanda" series (1994) appears to treble the brutality depicted earlier. Bodies piled upon bodies, covered with sheets or naked, withered or blasted apart -- the heart reels. The most affecting image depicts a skeleton, its arm flung over its skull in a final, futile gesture.
What makes these images any more powerful than the others? A perished Salvadoran ought to be mourned no more or less than a perished Hutu. The answer lies in the way the exhibit provides explanatory text at some points and witholds it at others. At the beginning, a gloss accompanies each photograph, informing the viewer in terse, bloodless phrases of the political situations that gave rise to the horrors depicted. By the time one reaches "Rwanda," the explanations begin to disappear, and one is left alone with the unexplainable.
No one should miss this exhibit. It appears at a time when the resolutions of global conflicts seem to be represent Pyrrhic victories: the cease-fire in Northern Ireland, the handshake between Rabin and Arafat and the election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa do not stoke a sense of hope as much as they mildly surprise a world too jaded and cynical to imagine an end to senseless carnage. Nachtwey's photographs confront the modern imagination with its own paralysis.
"James Nachtwey: Photographs" is on exhibition at the Hood Museum until Nov. 20. Nachtwey, who is currently at work in Haiti, will return to present a slide lecture and discussion at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 12 in Loew Auditorium. A panel discussion titled "Focusing the Public Eye: Photojournalism and Public Policy" will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 13 in the Lathrop Gallery.