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.
