War Photographer

James Nachtwey is the most famous war photographer in the world.  Afghanistan and Bosnia, Rwanda and El Salvador, Somalia and South Africa:  for twenty years he’s taken pictures when others have fled, and as a result determined much of our own ideas of war and crisis.  In his Oscar-nominated portrait, the Swiss documentarist Christian Frei (“Miriam, Ricardo Y Fidel”) shows the man behind the camera, a man who in the midst of the most gruesome war incidents retains his stoic calm.  A mini video camera, mounted on his own camera, allows particular insight into Nachtweys methods.  In using this technique, Frei also documents the reality surrounding the moment of each snapshot, lending the photos an unexpected intimacy.