Christian Frei

War Photographer

Produced, Directed and Edited by:	Christian Frei
Photographs by:	James Nachtwey
Digital Betacam Cinematography:	Peter Indergand scs
Cinematography (Palestine):	Hanna Abu Saada
Microcam Cinematography:	James Nachtwey
Microcams built by:	Swiss Effects
Assistant Director / Assistant Editor:	Barbara Muller
Sound Editing / Sound Mix	Florian Eidenbenz
Music by	Eleni Karaindrou Arvo Part David Darling
Music Producer:	Manfred Eicher www.war-photographer.com

Film Locations

"War Photographer" was shot in:
- Kosovo, The Balkans (June 1999)
- Jakarta, Indonesia (May/June 1999)
- Ramallah, Palestine (October/November 2000)
- Kawah Ijen, A Sulfur Mine in East Java, Indonesia (October 1999)
- New York City and Hamburg

Film plot

In one of the world's countless crisis areas, surrounded by suffering, death, violence and chaos, photographer James Nachtwey searches for the picture he thinks he can publish. A film about a committed, shy man, who is considered one of the bravest and most important war photographers of our time - but hardly fits the cliché of the hard-boiled war veteran.

A film about the American photographer James Nachtwey, about his motivation, his fears and his daily routine as a war photographer. If we believe Hollywood pictures, war photographers are all hard-boiled and cynical old troopers. How can they think about 'exposure time' in the very moment of dread?

Swiss author, director and producer Christian Frei followed James Nachtwey for two years into the wars in Indonesia, Kosovo, Palestine... Christian Frei used special micro-cameras attached to James Nachtwey's photo-camera.

We see a famous photographer looking for the decisive moment. We hear every breath of the photographer. For the first time in the history of movies about photographers, this technique allowed an authentic insight into the work of a concerned photo-journalist.

 

Christian Frei was born in 1959, in Schönenwerd, Switzerland. He studied Visual Media at the Department of  Journalism and Communication at Fribourg University. He shot his first documentary in 1981, and has been working as an independent filmmaker and producer since 1984. He works regularly for Swiss National Television SF DRS. In 1997, he shot his first feature length documentary, Ricardo, Miriam y Fidel, the tale of a Cuban family torn between loyalty to the revolutionary ideals and the desire to emigrate to the United States. In 2001, his War Photographer followed photojournalist James Nachtwey during his various missions. The film received an Academy Award Nomination for "Best Documentary Feature" and won twelve International Filmfestivals. The Giant Buddhas deals with the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha sculptures.

Filmography

1981: Die Stellvertreterin (Documentary)
1982: Fortfahren (co-director), (Documentary)
1984: Der Radwechsel (Documentary)

TV Documentaries
1997: Ricardo, Miriam y Fidel (TV-Version)
1998: Kluge Köpfe (TV-Documentary)
2000: "Bollywood" im Alpenrausch (TV-Documentary)
2001: War Photographer  (TV-Version)

James Nachtwey grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Dartmouth College, where he studied Art History and Political Science (1966-70). Images from the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement had a powerful effect on him and were instrumental in his decision to become a photographer. He has worked aboard ships in the Merchant Marine, and while teaching himself photography, he was an apprentice news film editor and a truck driver. In 1976 he started work as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico, and in 1980, he moved to New York to begin a career as a freelance magazine photographer. His first foreign assignment was to cover civil strife in Northern Ireland in 1981 during the IRA hunger strike.

Since then, Nachtwey has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues. He has worked on extensive photographic essays in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.

Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984. He was associated with Black Star from 1980 - 1985 and was a member of Magnum from 1986 until 2001. He has had solo exhibitions at the International Center of Photography in New York, the Palazzo Esposizione in Rome, El Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, the Carolinum in Prague, the Hasselblad Center in Sweden, the Canon Gallery and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, and the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, among others.

He has received numerous honours such as the Robert Capa Gold Medal (five times), the World Press Photo Award twice, Magazine Photographer of the Year (six times), the International Center of Photography Infinity Award three times, the Leica Award twice, the Bayeaux Award for War Correspondents (twice), the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award, the Canon Photo essayist Award and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Grant in Humanistic Photography. He is a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and has an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Arts.

Nachtwey's Credo

In 1985, shortly before becoming a member of the world famous photo agency Magnum, the then 36-year-old James Nachtwey wrote the following text, a credo about the relevance of his work as a war photographer.

Why photograph war?

There has always been war. War is raging throughout the world at the present moment. And there is little reason to believe that war will cease to exist in the future. As man has become increasingly civilized, his means of destroying his fellow man have become ever more efficient, cruel and devastating.

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.

For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke a sense of humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war and if it is used well it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote to war.

In a way, if an individual assumes the risk of placing himself in the middle of a war in order to communicate to the rest of the world what is happening, he is trying to negotiate for peace. Perhaps that is the reason why those in charge of perpetuating a war do not like to have photographers around.

It has occurred to me that if everyone could be there just once to see for themselves what white phosphorous does to the face of a child or what unspeakable pain is caused by the impact of a single bullet or how a jagged piece of shrapnel can rip someone's leg off - if everyone could be there to see for themselves the fear and the grief, just one time, then they would understand that nothing is worth letting things get to the point where that happens to even one person, let alone thousands.  

But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there - to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on - to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference - to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.

The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It is something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition I will have sold my soul. The stakes are simply too high for me to believe otherwise.

I attempt to become as totally responsible to the subject as I possibly can. The act of being an outsider aiming a camera can be a violation of humanity. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extend to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other, and to that extent I can accept myself.