James Nachtwey

After having a lesson of watching a video about a photographer called James Nachtwey, i came away feeling very morbid a slightly upset. His work is beautiful and his compositions are amazing but i also found his work rather upsetting and intrusive.From watching the video i found his approach in situations of mourning far too much and very intrusive getting in the subjects face whilst they are crying over the death of there loved ones.

I also found the contents of his work rather upsetting, and i think these days we try our hardest to block out the starving of children and adults in Africa and the war issues and deaths in Iran and Iraq and the problems of the world. We block these issues out and try to get on with our day to day life by blocking or selectively ignoring the ugly upsetting side of the world out, to save our conscience.

With James Nachtwey he bring these issues to our eyes whilst were sat comfortably and safe in our homes and we find our selves not wanting to look at these images and issues but the good person in your personalty makes you want to stay and watch his video and images so you almost seem to feel trapped within these images, sat feeling the need that you must keep watching these images in a rough sense to learn these rough lessons,that good,everyday people suffer simply because they get caught up within a war or simply because they live in a certain country.

And that is why i love his work although i find it rather intrusive. I think in a way you have to have people like this in a our world otherwise many important dates and occasions and catastrophic losses go unnoticed and ignored. Say for instance world war 2:camp Auschwitz and the holocaust if people did not photographically document it out of "respect" would we know about the terrible suffering and deaths these poor innocent people had to go through today?

So yes although his work is intrusive but we need people like this so historic landmarks are reported. I also think that his compositions are very skillful. I think the majority of his work being black and white gives his images a sense of emotion and drama. But also his colour images set the scene i find.I LOVE how his work is not always placed within the centre of the image but off set.
There's nothing more than i hate when people are so narrow minded that they think that for a image to be good that the subject has to be slap bang in the centre(like the debate i got into with Jane in our group crit the other day, i think you can see which side i was fighting) and i think that james's work demonstrates these factors of the image being offset but yet his work being exquisite and well composed, bellow you will find some images of James Nachtwey which enroll these factors that i have just explained and images that i find interesting and beautiful (in a morbid sense).