On James Natchwey and VII; from Inferno to War: A Few Considerations on James Natchwey, VII, and War Photography

Even in the age of television, still photography maintains a unique ability to grasp a moment out of the chaos of history and to preserve it and hold it up to the light. It puts a human face on events that might otherwise become clouded in political abstractions and statistics. It gives a voice to people who otherwise would not have one. If journalism is the first draft of history, then photography is all the more difficult, because in capturing a moment you don't get a second chance. Hundreds of years from now, when our descendents are trying to understand the time in which we are living, photography will be a crucial part of the record. In the present tense, photography is critical in helping create an atmosphere in which change is possible, not only possible but inevitable. It does this by making an appeal to people's best instincts: generosity, the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, the willingness to identify with others, the refusal to accept the unacceptable. In the long run, photography enters our collective consciousness, and more important, our collective conscience. It becomes an archive of visual memory, so that we learn from the past and apply its lessons to the future. James Natchwey. These were the words that James Natchwey pronounced as his receiving speech at Tel Aviv University last year when he shared the Dan David Prize ($1,000,000) in the Present category with documentary film-maker Frederick Wiseman. very first sentence of this statement alludes to what may be the challenge and the strength of the still image in the twenty first century: it diverges from other visual media with which it competes for exposure and attention, and for over 150 years it has completely changed the way history has been recorded and the way it will be perceived. Photographers such as Natchwey, from Riis to Hine and many others, have provided the human collective memory and mind, with invaluable information for the future understanding of our times. Before photography, only the memory of those who could afford chroniclers would survive. Along with the advent of photography, the very focus of historians shifted; from L'Ecole des Annales to various schools in sociology and anthropology, scholars turned to vernacular culture, and the study of how the other halves live around the world. least that can be noted here is an obvious synergy. However, and in spite of its accomplishments, documentary photography has been heavily stigmatized lately by postmodern doubts and well-deserved criticisms as well as by our culture of infotainment (or entertainmation). The news that is fit to print may not always be the one that is fit to analyze and remember. There have been many examples, from New York Times to Sunday Times (1)--only to quote two of the most prestigious daily news providers--of news and images worthy of world attention that competed for the front page with fashion shows ... and lost. immediacy of television and video images, and our too easily passive fascination for the moving image, have deprived photojournalists (as well as pen journalists) of their traditional audiences. Moreover the recent concentration of image banks and image distribution networks has resulted in the disappearance (de facto even if their names still survive in some few cases) of numerous photo agencies (Viva, Sygma, Sipa, Gamma, etc....) and the firing of scores of photographers. If the twentieth century saw a paradigmal shift, it is probably in the way that control moved from the word to the image. From the individual, to the corporate world, and even public spheres, everyone wants to control not only their own images but any image that could be used as evidence against any of their flaws or wrong doings. From Corbis to Getty or Hachette, a few private enterprises have made it their goal to hold the visual memory of the planet, and to control the distribution of visual information. …