about James
This is a tribute MySpace page that I've created for my favorite documentary photographer, James Nachtwey. If you’d like to visit James´ official website just click on the photo above.
James Nachtwey was born in Syracuse, New York. He grew up in Massachusetts, graduated from Leominster High School and attended Dartmouth College from 1966 - 1970, where he was a member of Casque and Gauntlet, played rugby, and studied Art History and Political Science. Influenced by imagery from the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement, he taught himself photography.
After graduating from college, Nachtwey held a series of jobs, including work as a truck driver and on merchant ships. During this period Nachtwey fell in love with photography. He acquired skills in these jobs that would later prove useful to him as he navigated the globe in search of news stories.
Nachtwey started working as a newspaper photographer in 1976 at a small newspaper in New Mexico. In 1980, he moved to New York and began working as a freelance photographer. In 1981, Nachtwey covered his first overseas assignment in Ireland. Nachtwey has documented a variety of armed conflicts and social issues. He spent considerable time in South Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union shooting pictures of war, conflict and famine, and images of socio-political issues (pollution, crime and punishment) in Western Europe and the United States. He currently lives in New York City.
In 1994, Nachtwey was covering the upcoming elections in South Africa, the first non-racial ones in decades. As an associate of the Bang-Bang Club, he was at the scene when Ken Oosterbroek was killed and Greg Marinovich was seriously injured.
Nachtwey had been injured previously in his work, but it was during his extensive coverage of the United States invasion of Iraq that he received his first combat injury. As Nachtwey, along with TIME correspondent Michael Weisskopf rode in the back of a humvee with the United States Army Tomb Raiders, an insurgent threw a grenade into the vehicle. Weisskopf grabbed the grenade to throw it out of the humvee, but it exploded in his hand. Two soldiers were injured in the explosion, along with the TIME journalists. Nachtwey managed to take several photographs of medic Billie Grimes treating Weisskopf before passing out. Both journalists were airlifted to Germany and later to hospitals in the United States. Nachtwey recovered sufficiently to return overseas to cover the tsunami in Southeast Asia of December 26, 2004.
Nachtwey has worked with TIME as a contract photographer since 1984. He worked for Black Star from 1980 until 1985 and was a member of Magnum Photos from 1986 until 2001. In 2001, he was a founding member of the VII Photo Agency.
He was with Thomas E. Franklin at the World Trade Center when Franklin made the famous Raising the Flag at Ground Zero photo of three firefighters raising the flag in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Nachtwey later made series of photographs about the September 11, 2001 attacks. Nachtwey also compiled a photo essay on the effects of the Sudan conflict on civilians.
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