War Journalism

By photographing war, is it possible to put an end to a form of human behaviour which is existed throughout the history ? By means of photography the porportion of that notion seemed 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, the photography can be percived opposite of war and if it is used well it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote to a war, in a way if an individual persumes the risk of placing himself in a middle of war in order to communicate to rest of the world what is happening, he is trying to negotiate for peace, perhaps, thats the reason those who are incharge of perperpetuating the war do not like to have photographers around. In field what you feel is extremely immediate, what you see is not a image or a page in a magazine 10,000 kms away with an advertisement of rollex watches next page, what you see is unmedicated pain in justice of mesiry.
Its occured to me, if everyone could be there just once to see for themselves, what white phosphorous does to the face of a child, and what unspeakable pain is caused by the impact of a single bomb, how a jaggered shrapnel can rip someone`s leg off, if everyone could be there to see for themselves, the fear and greif one time, then they would understand that nothing is worth letting things get to the point when that happen to one person, let alone thousands.

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

In the era where majority of people are obsessed with entertainment, glamour, sports,scandals etc. its more difficult to publications and broadcasters to focus on issues that are more critical, that do not provide people to escape relaity but attempt to get deeper into reality, to be concerned about some thing much greater than themselves and i think people are concerned, i think quite often publication and broadcasters do not give enough credit to their audience for that. Infact at the end of the day, i believe, people do want to know when there`s some major tragedy going on, when there`s some unacceptable situation happening in this world. They want to do something about this……

WE MUST LOOK AT IT, WE REQUIRE TO LOOK AT IT, WE REQUIRE TO DO WHAT WE CAN ABOUT IT….
IF WE DON`T , THEN WHO WILL….?

By – This whole text is taken from a documentary named “War photographer ” based on the works of James Nachtwey and directed by Christian Fei