War Photographer

WAR PHOTOGRAPHER (2001)

There are some movies that make us aware of what is going on environment. There are different countries with full of people suffering from poverty, war and so on,will continue to be suffer, as well.

War Photographer is a documentary by director and Producer Christian Frei, about the one of the most effective photojournalist James Nachtway's fears, motivations, aims as a war photographer. This documentary is also a tool for arousing people around the world and show them people in need.

Documentary was shooted by small betacam video camera and SLR Camera seperately. Mr. Nachtway mounted betacem video camera on his SLR camera. This gives us an intimately viewpoint and helps us to feel the authentic emiotions. This idea is given at the begining of the documentary with this philosophy ' If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.' by Robert Capa. After, we see that James Nachtway takes photos of burning places closely after the war happened at Kosovo. While Mr. Nachtway is shooting the post-war images, we see the preparation of publication side as parallel editing. While Mr. Nachtway is shooting the people who still couldn't digest the war and just walk around and cry, we see the editors, talking about the pictures as ' There are one million refugee, one hundred of them were dead but they were not burried, and piles of corpses occured...This will be great... This seems exceptional.....' So, we see the advertising side of this job. However, I think we should look from the positive side that this subjects are heard by all around the world. At least, it is better from advertising entertainement subjects. There is a scene that soil is digged in order to embed a person. One of the old man probably relative of that person, watches people without crying. This man's video is taken for a long time and, it seems that this man becomes soulless because of experienced many number of dead.

Mr. Nachtway decided to become a war-photographer during the Viatnam war. He says that 'I was an contradiction to what a political leaders and military leaders were telling us.They were straight forward documentry images a powerful and deadly of the war how unjust it was, cool it was simply by showing what was happening there.' ...He was excited ' Wittnessing history not from an academic point of view, not from a distance but really what happens to people, ordinary people in the course of history...' We realize throughout documentary that people who are involved with this job, always query their job and life.

We listen a death of one man's cousin while this man is telling his cousin's death way to Mr. Nachtway. It is really hard to believe that people have been experiencing these and will always be experiencing when we have no idea about these feelings.

Hans-Hermann Klare who is a Foreign Editor at STERN Magazine talks about the differences of Mr. Nachtway from the other war-photographers. He says that ' Jim ( James Nachtway ) saw more pain and misery rather than other War Photographers..Jim is alone..Jim turned to a different person during spending his 25 years as a war photographer.....One day; When we went to drink a beer because of what we experienced during day, Jim drank a glass of water and went to bad.'

The most inconceviable and incredible situation for Mr. Nachtway was happened in Ruanda. Between half and 2 million people were killed with primitive weapons as clubs, rocks and machetes face to face. He saw a massarce. These makes Mr. Nachtway to query the reasons of this fear and hatred.

The miserable life in Indonesia is so unbeliavable that People live along railwaytracks. They build their places from abandon wood and plastics. During these times, Mr. Nachtway discovered a man who has one arm and one leg and asked him to understand what had happened. Than, Mr. Nachtway learned that train passed over that man seven years ago. The man was living with his wife and four children between railway tracks. Mr. Nachtway spent time with them in order to make their documentary.

In Jakarta, there is an incredible poverty that childs works in piles of rubbish instead of going to school just for 85 cent. According to Jim, the worst thing is suffering from starvation that comes after war. Starvation is the primitive weapon of all time.

There is unjustness all around the world. Jim takes these photographs not in order to artistic purposes, contrarily, he uses his job as a tool to show this unjustness to the world.

In order to see James Nachtway's work you can follow up his site; http://www.jamesnachtwey.com