War Photography

An angry mob attacks a man who stumbles down the street in a semi-conscious attempt to escape the clutches of their fists, clubs and knives. As blood runs down his face from a fresh head-wound, it mixes with his tears and clouds his vision; he falls...

A young Tutsi man turns his head, as if sitting for a closeup, exposing a series of deep laceration scars on his scalp and cheeks; with half of his right ear missing, he wonders if anybody is listening...

In a bunker in war-torn Grozny, a Chechen rebel clutching a M-4 assault rifle with white knuckles, lets out a battle-cry captured in the silence of black and white photography...

These images are but a few examples of the places and events which American photojournalist and war photographer James Nachtwey has seen, and been witness. His images equal the power of the explosions that have ripped through Grozny, and Sarajevo, leaving us to wonder who, or what type of evil can explain the pieces leftover.

The importance of capturing humanity at its worst in order to hope for the best, is the driving force for Nachtwey, who has photographed acts of war, terror and human suffering from the African famines of the early 1990s, to 9/11. For Nachtwey, news of these and other tragedies like them are most intimately and honestly captured in photographs. It remains a mystery to him (and myself) that humanity could be pushed to such liminality, that the only means of defense, the only means of hope, the only act of freedom, is to kill that which shares our suffering...our fellow human beings.

It is hard to deny the power of photography. Photojournalists force us to look not only with our eyes, but with conscious reflection at the consequences of human suffering. Nachtwey's quest to stop the cycle of human violence through photographs -a quest undeniably noble and necessary- begs some questions as to whether or not such a revelation of understanding can be instigated by silent observers - the photojournalist. Are not these photographs simply lost in the milieu of images we see everyday?

There is a visceral haunt that festers in the minds of photojournalists; they see the violence; they capture a newly-fired bullet leaving a white-hot chamber; but they cannot move the targets, lest they should become targets themselves - they can do nothing to stop the violence in the heat of the moment. Like journalists, whose pen is their pistol, the knowledge we gain from war photography is in retrospect, forever carrying the hope of never again.

Nachtwey has tasked himself with understanding something much bigger than himself; for war is a needle in the vein of humanity. It blurs our vision and dilates our pupils with power and greed, leaving precious life in the blind spot.

Perhaps it is too easy look away;
too easy to say their problems are a world away;
to convince ourselves that they are them,
not us.
To do this, is to deny that the sun shines and rain is wet.