(1984, Syracuse, NYC, USA)
James Natchwey is an influential American war photographer, born in Syracuse and raised in Massachusetts.
He was trained in Art History and Political Science. Influenced by images from the Vietnam War and the African American Civil Rights Movement, he decided to become a photographer. He worked aboard merchant marine ships and, while learning to photograph, worked as an interim in documentary film editing and as a trucker. In 1976 he began working as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico and in 1980 he moved to New York to start a career as a freelance magazine photographer. His first job as an international photographer was covering the civil movement in Northern Ireland in 1981 during the hunger strike led by members of the IRA and INLA. Since then, James Nachtwey has dedicated himself to documenting wars, conflicts, and precarious social situations.
Since 1984 he has been a photographer for Time magazine. He was associated with Black Star from 1980 to 1985 and was a member of the Magnum agency from 1986 to 2001. In this year he participated in the founding of the photography agency VII Photo Agency. He had solo exhibitions at the International Center for Photography (ICP) in New York, at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, at the Culturgest in Lisbon, in the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid and in the Fahey / Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, among the most outstanding. He is associated with the Royal Photographic Society and holds an honorary doctorate in arts from the Massachusetts College of Arts.
In 2001 the documentary War Photographer based on his work was published, directed by Christian Frei and nominated for an Oscar for best documentary film. In 2003, working for Time magazine in Baghdad, he was wounded by a grenade while accompanying a United States Army patrol. He was admitted unconscious for a few days.
Some of his Photos
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