"Sometimes I don't want to see what I am seeing, but it is there."
War photographer and Montgomery Fellow James Nachtwey '70 describes his job as not creating art, but communicating with a mass audience about armed conflict, and critical social issues. His work takes him around the world -- he has photographed in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Somalia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Romania, Sri Lanka and Sudan -- taking pictures of famine, war, brutality, injustice and death in the hope that through his pictures peoples' suffering might be alleviated.
The images Nachtwey creates are graphic records of the suffering he has encountered, disturbing and stark images that make readers turn their heads.
Many assume that the people in his pictures are strangers who he encountered and photographed, people he came into contact with through circumstance. On the contrary, the photographer most often has established a relationship with his subjects. "Not only do I have to feel comfortable but so do the people I am taking pictures of. Otherwise they would never let me take them," he said.
Nachtwey's "comfort," though, is often short-lived, as he witnesses and photographs these people in their death throes on the field of battle.
Believing in his duty to present to the world the human cost of war, Nachtwey has paid a price himself, forced by his profession to deaden his sensitivities in the face of these horrors. "It is necessary to keep going," he said.
Nachtwey recalled a time early in his career when he felt an inner resistance to taking a certain photo. He was photographing brutally mutilated soldiers " the dead lying in the fields after a battle in El Salvador " but at one point he could no longer bare the sight. Shaken, he began to walk away from the killing field, but stopped himself. "I came to my senses and realized that I am not here to make myself feel good or to protect my own sensibilities," he said.
Nachtwey turned back and resumed shooting. "It was my duty to show my editors what happened, to show them the effect of our policy."
This desire to reveal the hidden effects of government action stems from the powerful images of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement of the '60s. "The pictures were revealing things that the political leaders were not telling us," he remembered.
After graduating from Dartmouth with degrees in art history and government, however, Nachtwey took a rather circuitous route to his current profession, teaching himself photography during a stint in the Merchant Marines and spending time as an apprentice television news editor.
His choice of career has brought with it heavy consequences for Nachtwey's personal life. "I carry a weight and I have denied myself a normal life with a family," he said.
The weight he carries is the sum of the myriad horrors he has witnessed, but from his years photographing, one experience in particular stands out as the most tragic -- his assignment covering famine in Sudan. Taking pictures at relief centers of the starving, Nachtwey was drawn away from the feeding centers. As he explored the area, the photographer encountered people lying in on the roadside, weakened from malnourishment to the point of collapse. Faced with this suffering, Nachtwey stopped taking pictures and began transporting these people to the centers himself.
The moral dilemma caused by taking pictures of humans in pain is not one that Nachtwey takes lightly. On other occasions, he has assisted the needy, even carrying wounded soldiers off the battlefield and helping others escape from the chaos of rioting mobs. Usually, however, there are paramedics or other humanitarian aid workers present to help the people whose suffering Nachtwey captures on film.
The rights of his subjects is a key ethical issue to the photographer; he insists on introducing himself to the people he shoots to obtain their consent and is adamant about respecting the emotions of his subjects. In Bosnia, he spent an entire day with a family whose son had been slain in battle, attending his funeral and establishing an emotional bond with them before photographing their anguish. His photograph of the dead soldier's widow is one of his most well known and affecting.
The emotional bonds he forms imbue his photographs with deeper emotion. He almost always revisits the villages he photographs several times, and each time he seems to take away images that are more intimate and revealing.
"I want my pictures to get people to stop and think," he said.
Nachtwey's intent in his photography is to make the masses aware of what is going on in the world for the purpose of affecting change. "War photography is the antidote to war ... a negotiation to peace," he said. He is showing people that abstract policies have a human cost, and hopes that by increasing awareness, people will ultimately pressure world governments to end bloodshed.
Although Nachtwey, who recently left for Israel, feels he has seen enough and is tired of traveling, he will not stop taking pictures. At least, not yet.
He still feels it is his duty.
