Rich Kopp Photography

Posts Tagged ‘photojournalist’

The World Press Photo jury has awarded the first prize in international competition, Best Cinematography, 2010, the South African photographer Jodi Bieber for a snapshot of Aisha Bibi, an Afghan woman in 18 years to her husband cut off her nose and ears to leave home. This image has been chosen among the 108,059 photographs submitted to the latest edition of the 5847 contest taken by photographers from 125 different nationalities. The judges saw the photograph, which made headlines last August for Time magazine, as an icon that reflects the situation of abuse dignity of many women in the world.

The foreman of the World Press Photo was American David Burnett, photojournalist and a founding member of Contact Press Images.

Among the Spanish. Moleres Fernando’s work, published by El Pais Semanal, has been awarded second prize in the category of stories of everyday life with work on the situation in which they live under locked in a prison in Sierra Leone. Also Gustavo Cuevas, EFE, has won second place in the sports category, for his photograph of the butt of Julio Aparicio in sales, May 21, 2010. A portrait of a Dinka man outside his home in Akkach, southern Sudan, taken by Guillem Valle, has been awarded third prize in the category of portraits.

The April 23 start in Amsterdam (Netherlands) on a world tour of the winning photographs from World Press Photo

James Nachtwey is one of the most recognized contemporary photographers and respected in the world. The numerous awards, such as Martin Luther King, Robert Capa Gold Medal, the World Press Photo prize or Bayeaux for war correspondents, support its long history. According to The ABC of photography Nachtwey is the “most experienced war reporters and probably one of the few that has shown interest in the war itself.”
James Nachtwey’s beginnings as a photojournalist

Born in upstate New York in 1948, James Nachtwey graduated in Art History and Political Science in 1970. During their first jobs, among which include apprentice editor and a truck driver, became interested in social photography.

Images of Vietnam and the civil rights movement led him to the U.S. realize the power of photography as a means of communication and reporting. He himself said in an interview with Dena Cowen that “the public and the public needed the knowledge of these topics. I thought that photography was a useful tool to raise awareness and change and so I wanted to get involved in it.”

In 1976 Nachtwey started working as a photojournalist for a newspaper in New Mexico and four years later moved to New York where he began his career as a freelance for magazines.

In 1981 he covered the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. It was his first assignment abroad and since then his career in photography and photography of social conflicts would be unstoppable.

The social criticism through war photography

In the last thirty years has captured images James Nachtwey over 25 social conflicts or across the world to different media. Northern Ireland, Africa, Central America, Middle East, Southeast Asia or the Balkans have been the scene of emergencies that the photographer wanted to make his testimony and report publicly.

“I think people should be offended with the genocide. It should offend the ethnic cleansing. It should offend hunger. My job is to make these things are comfortable or easily digestible. My job is not to feel comfortable to People with these things, or entertain. My job is to make people aware of the fact that they are crimes against humanity, “said on its website.

Between 1980 and 1985 was associated with Black Star agency and in 1984 was hired by Time magazine, as well as belonging to the Magnum from 1986 until 2001. However, not all stories that were attractive photographer wanted to split the media. In cases such as orphanages in Romania or the famine in Somalia, financed his own trip Nachtwey.
Magnum-VII, the vision of a new photo agency close to the conflict

In 2001 he left Magnum Nachtwey and co-founded the agency VII, named for the seven photojournalists who constitute it. According to the same site VII, the eleven members documenting current environmental conflicts, social and political “to produce an unshakable testimony of the injustices created and experienced by people caught up in events they describe.”

Many of his images show the turbulent beginnings of the century, in which photographers do not hesitate to get involved in the conflict to document the facts and cause people to act.

The closeness of his pictures, taken with wide angle lenses always or 50mm, involves the viewer and Nachtwey was, like many other reporters, to be injured during their work. In 2003, while covering the arrival of U.S. troops to Iraq, a hand grenade entered the U.S. Army Humvee in which he was the correspondent Michael Weisskopf of Time and wounded two soldiers and two journalists. Nachtwey arrived to take several pictures of the doctor who attended Weisskopf before becoming unconscious for several days.