Movie: War Photographer
"Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography? The proportions of that notion seem ridiculously out of balance. Yet, that very idea has motivated me." - James Nachtwey
My wife and I watched Christian Frei's Academy Award-nominated documentary "War Photographer" a couple of weekends back. Kind of a NetFlix double feature with The Constant Gardener . The movie is a biographical profile of the the war photographer James Nachtwey, one of the co-founders of the VII agency.
The core of the film is Nachtwey's mantra, quoted above, that photography can have an effect on history. The film primarily focuses on his work in the former Yugoslavia, the Palestinian territories, and Indonesia. Nachtwey initially came across as a cold, callous intruder, pressing his lens into scenes of grief and mourning. The image above is a frame from the film and a fair amount of footage is captured with small microcameras aimed over Nachtwey's Canon SLR or tilted back into his face. This is intended to give a sense of what it's like to shoot, but its a poor approximation for having you eye pressed up into the viewfinder and the world outside the frame fades away in the intensity of looking for the right moment to squeeze the shutter release. The effect was quite odd, particularly early on. It mimics a Doom-like video game, with the shotgun replaced with a lens barrel.
So, the central question is can photography, journalistic photography, make a change as big as ending war? Nachtwey is not just interested in ending specific wars, he wants to end all war and he believes he can do that through his work. He's obviously very intense about it, forgoing the sorts of everyday comforts and relationships most westerners take for granted in order to pursue this dream. Which means he can come off as a bit self righteous at times, but maybe that's the guilt that comes with being exposed to this sort of life philosophy while sitting in your comfy little NYC apt watching a DVD while sipping micro waved hot chocolate.
From a war photography view, the film also shows how our viewpoint of war in the west has changed based which subjects the photographer chooses. Thru the Korean conflict and into Vietnam, to be a war photographer meant your focus was on the fighters and fighting. Now, in the wake of Vietnam, the armies are more wary about journalists (though interestingly, the embed program used in the early phases of Iraq seem to reverse that in ways many photographers found unnerving) and the emphasis became the civilian and noncombatant who feels the lasting effects of the war. In Nachtwey's view I suppose this is also because a dead or traumatized civilian makes a cleaner case than the equivalent soldier, that war must stopped
But the question remains, how effective can photography be in halting an activity that seems to lie at the very core of human nature? Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, a book about violent pictures, delved into this question, attacking the position that simply representing atrocity will. Evoke the proper revulsion and indignation. For some viewers, indignation will lead to thoughts of justice, retribution and revenge. Consider the varying reactions to the cellphone video of Saddam Hussein's execution. Iraqi Shiites lauded it as justice served, Europeans shook their heads at "barbarity", Iraqi Sunnis viewed it as shameful.
During the film, I couldn’t help but wonder about Nachtwey's view on image fatigue, that the volume of photos he taken of dead sons, grieving mothers, the poor, rebellious youth devolves into a heart-numbing mash. Over decades of seeing the same atrocities committed in every continent of the world and public reaction in the West generally responding as a collective shrug, it's hard to imagine Nachtwey doesn't hold onto his idealism simply as a bullwark against the realization that its all been for nothing and that we are condemned by our nature to continue to kill one another.
