We are not out to save the world but to tell the stories
of those who are. |
| JAMES NACHTWEY | interviewed by Stephanie Kinnunen
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“I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony.
The events I have recorded should not be forgotten
and must not be repeated.” —James Nachtwey |
James Nachtwey is perhaps the most well-known and highly-respected photojournalist living today. For almost 30 years he has photographed inside conflict zones intimately documenting urgent social issues. His freelance work has taken him to every corner of the globe to produce photographic essays in North and South America, Asia, Africa and eastern Europe. Nachtwey’s often raw and intensely close images have made millions keenly aware of little-known human suffering and acts of war.
After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1970, Nachtwey spent six years teaching himself photography, working, and apprenticing for a news film editor. He began his photojournalism career with a newspaper in New Mexico. Four years later, he moved to New York to freelance for magazines.
Nachtwey takes striking photographs of people in some of the most remote and dangerous places in the world, always with the goal of enlightening others and stirring them to action. He has won numerous awards including the Common Wealth Award, Martin Luther King Award, Robert Capa Gold Medal, World Press Photo Award and Magazine Photographer of the Year.
In 2007, he won one of three TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Prizes. TED brings together the world’s most intriguing people in order to help these individuals’ ideas change lives. Prize winners are asked to identify “one wish to change the world,” and TED provides funding and resources to support winners’ efforts to accomplish them.
Throughout his travels, Nachtwey often encountered people suffering from tuberculosis. His TED wish was to photograph the devastating effects of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) in order to raise awareness of this worldwide plight and to inspire people to become part of the solution. He spent the next 18 months visiting individuals on every part of the planet and launched the Web site XDRTB.org to display his photographs. Media coverage allowed hundreds of thousands of people to see Nachtwey’s images within days of their release. |
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