Quotes About James Nachtwey

#1. Photographer James Nachtwey has spent his professional life in the places people most want to avoid: war zones and refugee camps, the city flattened by an earthquake, the village swallowed by a flood, the farm hollowed out by famine.

Nancy Gibbs

#2. It is very hard to say where you're going until you get there. That kind of thing is based very much on instinct. As a photographer, one of the most important lessons I have learnt is that you have to learn to listen to and trust your own instinct. It has helped to guide me - this far at least.

James Nachtwey

#3. I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.

James Nachtwey

#4. If one lived for ever the joys of life would inevitably in the end lose their savour. As it is, they remain perennially fresh.

Bertrand Russell

#5. Grace and gratitude go together like heaven and earth.

Karl Barth

#6. If I can upset people, if I can ruin their day, then I have done my job.

James Nachtwey

#7. [Photography] puts a human face on issues which, from afar, can appear abstract or ideological or monumental in their global impact.

James Nachtwey

#8. I used to call myself a war photographer. Now I consider myself as an antiwar photographer.

James Nachtwey

#9. An attack on Public Education is an attack on Democracy

Diane Ravitch

#10. I began after college, about 1972. I began to teach myself photography. I went to work for a local newspaper for four years as a kind of basic training.

James Nachtwey

#11. I don't think tragic situations are necessarily devoid of beauty.

James Nachtwey

#12. If there is something occurring that is so bad that it could be considered a crime against humanity, it has to be transmitted with anguish, with pain, and create an impact in people - upset them, shake them up, wake them out of their everyday routine.

James Nachtwey

#13. Anything you can imagine, you can create.

Oprah Winfrey

#14. When the truth is spoken, it doesn't need to be adorned. It just needs to be simply stated, and often it only needs to be said once.

James Nachtwey

#15. If I'm feeling outraged, grief, disbelief, frustration, sympathy, that gets channeled through me and into my pictures and hopefully transmitted to the viewer.

James Nachtwey

#16. I became a photographer in order to be a war photographer, and a photographer involved in what I thought were critical social issues. From the very beginning this was my goal.

James Nachtwey

#17. 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

#18. I don't believe there's any such thing as objective reality. It's only reality as we experience it.

James Nachtwey

#19. If you want to connect with people who are in distress and great grief and scared, you need to do it in a certain way. I move kind of slow. I talk kind of slow. I let them know that I respect them.

James Nachtwey

#20. People say jargon is a bad thing, but it's really a shortcut vocabulary professionals use to understand one another.

Erin McKean

#21. Do we really need another picture of Paris Hilton or Naomi Campbell?

James Nachtwey

#22. There is a job to be doneto record the truth. I want to wake people up!

James Nachtwey

#23. I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.

James Nachtwey

#24. The cure to your self is that you are not yours.

John De Ruiter

#25. None of the editors I've worked with have ever asked me to pull my punches. They've never asked me to give them anything other than my own interpretation of events.

James Nachtwey

#26. You are never freer than in that moment when you decide to expose yourself to sniper fire.

James Nachtwey

#27. The greatest statesmen, philosophers, humanitarians ... have not been able to put an end to war. Why place that demand on photography?

James Nachtwey

#28. For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war.

James Nachtwey

#29. I'm half deaf. I have nerve damage and a constant ringing in both of my ears, and there are certain times and conditions when I can hardly hear at all.

James Nachtwey

#30. Starvation and disease are the original weapons of mass destruction. When you burn fields and kill animals, people are left vulnerable.

James Nachtwey

#31. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.

Samuel Colbran

#32. The problem was Le Corbusier was a genius and an enormous artist, but he tried to resolve problems to which there is no solution. So the idea to demolish the centre of Paris in order to adapt it to the car - he drew it! - is something not even the most bloody dictators conceived.

Leon Krier