Over the years, as I’ve followed my dreams and passions of documentary storytelling – often times into some of the more tragic parts of the globe – I’ve resorted to channeling my inner James Nachtwey for inspiration and insight. Undoubtedly, many of you are quite familiar with who Nachtwey is. For those of you who are not familiar with the name, I would argue that there’s a 99.9 % chance that you are familiar with his work.
Since the Vietnam War, Nachtwey’s images of been seen worldwide by Life Magazine, Magnum and CNN (to name a tiny few). He has covered some of the most known of world events in the past 40 years including Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Indonesia, Cambodia and Nepal (to name a few). Christian Frei‘s extremely powerful ‘The War Photographer‘ was a well-known documentary film that was a first-hand account of past and present work, by the man himself.
To say that he has been a Hero and an Inspiration to all cultural, war journalist and humanitarian photographers and filmmakers, would be a vast understatement (bordering on cliche, even!).
I recently viewed his acceptance of the 2007 TED Award (Technology Entertainment Design) and wanted to share it with you:
What do you think of his work? What about the idea of a documentary photographer? Are what they (we’re) doing actually making a difference?
I believe that it’s a higher calling and one that is absolutely essential to give witness, give record to world events… so that all may learn from past mistakes and apply to future endeavours.
What do you think?
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