Nachtwey Takes Photojournalism Global
18 months ago, the legendary photojournalist James Nachtwey received the TED Prize: $100,000 to grant one wish to change the world.
His wish was to gain access to an undisclosed, under-reported story, and to break it in a way that provides "spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age."
Friday, October 3rd, that story finally breaks.
It will be broadcast on LED screens at locations on all 7 continents, as well as on the web. We'll post the URL when it's revealed tomorrow, and I'm confident it will be well worth a click.
Not just because his photographs are stunning, or because of his news sense, evidenced in three decades covering armed conflict, AIDS, industrial pollution and criminal justice from Northern Ireland to Rwanda, El Salvador to Iraq, the United States to Indonesia. What makes Nachwey's work so unique and tomorrow's event so significant is his singular approach to photography as a medium to communicate human suffering, and his belief in the centrality of emotional engagement with his subjects. If anyone can argue for the "power of news photography in the digital age," it's him.
The credo he wrote in 1985, in answer to the question "Why photograph war?" still stands up today:
...It has occurred to me that if everyone could be there just once to see for themselves what white phosphorous does to the face of a child or what unspeakable pain is caused by the impact of a single bullet or how a jagged piece of shrapnel can rip someone's leg off - if everyone could be there to see for themselves the fear and the grief, just one time, then they would understand that nothing is worth letting things get to the point where that happens to even one person, let alone thousands.
But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there - to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on - to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference - to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.
The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It is something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition I will have sold my soul. The stakes are simply too high for me to believe otherwise.
I attempt to become as totally responsible to the subject as I possibly can. The act of being an outsider aiming a camera can be a violation of humanity. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other, and to that extent I can accept myself.
Watch his TED Prize acceptance speech: