Photographers like to say that their still shots are the most powerful medium for conveying emotion, and if this film is any indication, then they’re right. I was struck by the intensity of the sadness and empathy that War Photographer evoked in me and, from the looks of it, my fellow classmates who covered their mouths with the same captivation that I felt myself. The pictures themselves would have been moving enough to provoke tears from most people who view them, but getting the behind-the-scenes perspective was even better able to put me in James Nachteway’s shoes as he moved from one violent scene to the next. It was a shocking, eye-opening perspective that lent the film an element of reality unmatched by any other special effects the director could have used. The vantage point behind the lens that was achieved from his attachable video camera made me feel like I was actually the one on the scene, snapping photos of atrocities I can only imagine.
Nachteway said if he were to become any photographer, it would be a war photographer. His motivation to educate people on the tragedies and injustices of war and other social crises is inspiring. He called his photography a “powerful indictment of the war,” and that just by showing people what was going on, it was an undeniable contradiction to what the government wanted the public to believe about the Vietnam War. His photos show the authentic emotion of ordinary people in situations that no one should have to find themselves in, and Nachteway portrays them accurately. I thought that the film covered every aspect of his job that a viewer could want to know about, right down the minutiae of his day-to-day labors, like meticulously labeling the film rolls and sorting out the placement of each photo. It was a strange reminder that taking these photos is his job, a job that he takes as seriously as possible.
His narratives answered many of the biggest questions I found myself asking throughout the course of the film. Most notably, I wondered how he could bring himself to snap close-up shots of people in utter agony, grieving over the mangled bodies of their children or lying on a hospital bed in terrible physical pain. He recognizes that taking photographs in private moments such as these in someone’s regular life would be unheard of, absolutely out of the question. But in a war zone, where people are forced to suspend any sense of normalcy, his presence was accepted, even welcomed. Through his photos, he told their story. Even when there was a language barrier, the universal understanding of injustice extended to an understanding that he, as a journalistic photographer, was doing them a great service by showing their pain to other people. Without him there, their grief would only be experienced by those around them, people who are not in a position to do anything productive about it. But through his pictures he evokes empathy, one of the most important ingredients in bringing about action. The people in his pictures realize they are victims, Nachteway said, and therefore allow him to document what they’re going through.
I thought the film did an excellent job of giving the viewer a complete picture of what Nachteway does every day and also included powerful video of action in the field. When a crew from NBC was reporting on the mass graves where anthropologists were identifying body parts, the film showed children throwing flowers onto the covered bodies. That one portion was so compelling because it conveyed the horrible, all encompassing effect that the war had on the environment they were in. Children seemed to respond to the scene as though it were just another sad day in the life, and it was incredibly depressing. The contrast of the shots of him in the field with the clean, unemotional, hard-tiled office scenes and the interview with the editor he had a relationship with was jarring and further illustrated to the viewer the enormity of his undertaking. He sacrificed everything in order to follow what he felt to be the ultimate fulfillment — doing whatever he could to show what happens to the people who were unlucky enough to live in a war environment.
His strategy of distancing himself from the horrors he sees through his lens is understandable, but at times baffling. That Nachteway sees people dying, starving, bleeding, sobbing or worse when he goes to work everyday is almost mind boggling, and several times throughout the movie I caught myself wondering whether I could do it. I never arrived at a definitive answer. I would like to think I could thrive in the dangerous environments if I knew that my doing so would show people who can’t be there what war is really like for those involved. But when I try to imagine myself in such a scenario, I know I would be too overcome with emotion to continue taking pictures. One of his colleagues said after a long day, several of their coworkers like to unwind with a beer, but Nachteway never felt the need to recover from what he’d seen, at least in public. He often came across as too distant, but because his experiences set him apart from most other people involved in the other steps of the process it is impossible to fault him for his personal way of dealing with the atrocities he has photographed.
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