James Nachtwey Research Paper

James Nachtwey was born on March 14, 1948 in Syracuse, New York. He was a war photographer. The civil war was an inspiration for him to create photographs of war zones. James had happened to be in New York September 11, 2001, when the towers fell to ruble. He felt awkward being in cities, he often felt he needed to be on an assignment, taking photographs and documenting conflicts and what not. That morning he sat in his loft drinking his morning coffee while looking out upon the Brooklyn Bridge and crystal-clear sky the bluest he ever saw in a long time. A conditional piolet would call it "severe clear". The Bridge was golden lit from behind. The water taking on the angel like color of the sun as the light spread across the surface. From the

In the words of Nachtwey himself "I under stood I had but five seconds to live. And my chances of surviving this were very slim. It was actually a very beautiful sight with the smoke and the metal and the paper against the sky was visually stunning". He found refuge in a hotel elevator right as everything went black. As he inched forward looking for light he saw blinks that turned out to be police cars. Then he knew he was outside he made his way back to Ground Zero. There was nothing but mile long piles of rubble it was truly horrifying, there wasn't anything that anyone could do. But at the same time the sight was breath taking. The main thing that made this photography experience different than any other war that he had been doing for the past 30 years is that he was seeing no dead bodies that just let you know that there were just too many to save that it was undoable. That experience was different from all others. And will surely never be forgotten. Veering from the tower incident he had also photographed wars and had worked for time magazine he was quite an interesting man. He has documented wars across the globe and is surely the greatest war photographer of his generation.