James Nachtwey was born in Syracuse, New York in 1948 and studied History of Art and Political Science at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He joined the Merchant Marine after college in the late 1960s, and although he was not sent to Vietnam, the coverage of that war had a profound effect on him. He realized that still photography gave the true picture of the impact of events in Vietnam and "humanized the war by showing what was happening to ordinary people at ground level." Later, Nachtwey worked as a news film editor for NBC and during this period made the decision to become directly involved photographing events where history was being made. He believed that documenting injustice could be a form of protest and that photography could help to create an atmosphere in which there exists an impetus for change.

Nachtwey started his photographic career in the late 1970s working for a newspaper in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After four years, Nachtwey decided to move to New York City and look for freelance work as a photojournalist. His first assignment came in 1981 covering the IRA hunger strikes in Northern Ireland. This story was Nachtwey's first published international story.

Subsequent years found Nachtwey covering war and conflict in the Middle East (Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza), South Africa, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Chechnya. He has photographed famine in Sudan and Somalia, genocide in Rwanda, ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, homelessness in Rio de Janeiro, industrial pollution in Eastern Europe, and the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. His photographs of the devastating conditions in the orphanages in Romania caught the attention of the world, and helped bring about improvements. In the United States, Nachtwey has documented police work in New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, and prisons in Alabama. He has been a member of Magnum Photos, the renowned international photography agency, since 1986.

A five-time recipient of the Robert Capa Gold Medal Awardºmost recently in 1999 for his spot news coverage of riots in JakartaºJames Nachtwey has also been the recipient of the Magazine Photographer of the Year award six times. He has received two World Press Photo Awards, The Eugene Smith Memorial Grant, The Leica Award twice and The Bayeaux Award for War Correspondents twice. This year marks his third ICP Infinity Award for Photojournalism; the previous two were awarded in 1989 and 1993. His work has been published in Time, National Geographic, German GEO, and the New York Times Magazine, among others. Deeds of War (Thames and Hudson, 1989), his first publication, documents the most important images from the first decade of Nachtwey's career.