(Photos from http://www.jamesnachtwey.com)

James Nachtwey was born in Syracuse, New York, on the 14^th of March in 1948 where he would eventually go study Art History and Political Science at Dartmouth College and finished there in 1970. The photography of Nachtwey that would later shower many rewards such as the Robert Capa Medal, Magazine Photograph of the Year, the Infinity Award, the World Press Photo, and countless more was first inspired from the photography that he saw coming out of the Vietnam War  and the American Civil Rights movement. He first started learning photograph while he worked aboard ships and as a truck driver eventually leading him to become an apprentice news editor. Then in 1976 he would finial start his main journalism and photography work for a newspaper in New Mexico and then four years later he would travel to New York to start work as a freelancer photographer. James Nachtwey would then start his work with Time in 1984 and has since been a contractor for them. He would then also become a member of the Black Star phot agency until 1985, join Magnum Photos from 1896 to 2001, and finally in 2001 start his very own photo agency VII (Fundacion Princesa de Asturias). As seen from James Nachtwey’s website Witness Photography by James Nachtwey, James Nachtwey’s career would show him documenting some of the most horrific pictures from conflicts in Afghanistan, to the AIDs epidemic in Africa, to the actions of people in war torn areas, to the famine ravaged areas of the world through the terrifying pictures of men with no fat or muscle on their body, and even most recently he was in New York during 9/11 and took powerful pieces of the World Trade Center while falling and after falling. He spent four decades out in war torn areas or disaster areas trying to show the people the disturbing state that some places of the world are in. He would put his life second in order to capture these photos as seen when he first received his first injury from a combat zone. When he was documenting the United States involvement in Iraq James had a grenade thrown into a military Humvee he was in where a Time employee Michael Weisskopf attempted to throw the grenade out of the vehicle. Ultimately James received his first combat injury from this grenade and was airlifted to Germany and then back to the United States for treatment (Ratnesar 2003). In addition to his amazing photography, Nachtwey has also featured in a documentary War Photographer in which it followed Nachtwey’s life and the work he has done thus also featuring more avenues for people to learn of the terrifying injustices of the world. Additionally, the documentary was nominated in the Academy Awards for best documentary film which gave further publicity to Nachtwey and his photography. James Nachtwey is known as being one of the best war photographers around the world and his imagery will always be there showing the world the dark and sad parts of the world (Fundacion Princesa de Asturias).

References:

Fundacion Princesa de Asturias. Retrieved from http://www.fpa.es/en/princess-of-asturias-awards/laureates/2016-james-nachtwey.html#recurso.

Ratnesar, Romesh, & Weisskopf, Michael. (2003). “Portrait Of A Platoon”. Time. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1006535-1,00.html.

Witness Photography by James Nachtwey. Retrieved from http://www.jamesnachtwey.com.

The above Photoshop creation is based on the paintings and ideas of Guiseppe Arcimboldo where he would take ideas and objects and incorporate them into the portraits of people. The elements and principles of art are present within this creation through color and the shape of the objects put together which form what looks to be a person taking a picture of themselves. This picture was based on a picture of myself and the objects that are now making up the picture are just a few things that I feel I use and like a lot. I cannot go a day without my laptop and keyboard, I eat pasta with Alfredo and Pesto sauce almost everyday of the week, I have been using that same pencil for probably the past three years at the very least, and I consume likely way above the average amount of coffee. The background image was taken at a nearby park by my home in Cleveland where there is an overhang that overlooks a huge valley. I used it as the background since I used to go there all the time and while it is not an object the piece needed a background and it may as well be something that still characterized a part of me. The actual process of creating the image started with me gathering pictures of the objects used and then attempting to the best of my ability to piece them over a picture of myself. At a certain point it started looking ridiculous so I decided why not go for all out strange with it which caused myself to give me a coffee mug hat since I love coffee so much it is basically a drug to me and also game me some coffee ground bag eyes. Overall I am happy with the final product since it really contains the core things I love to use, or eat, the most!

Starting with art elements and principles this work has a heavy presence of both movement and proportion. There is movement in the multiple ways you can follow the subject looking around at his surroundings. And his facial features have been messed with in size where in some cases his eyes, mouth, or nose are larger or smaller than elsewhere in the picture. The critiques I received as suggestions were to make the background less of a focus because of the picture being too busy and in one part of the picture the top of his head was showing below his nose. So I attempted changing the background to a gray scale while keeping the color of the subject but halfway through the process I realized I personally preferred the more busy look of the picture and the gray-scale just did not look as well as expected. And I also adjusted the pictures around so that his hair would only show on the very top end of combined pictures and adjusted some of the proportions of the pictures so that all his features looked further cohesive while still being fairly disjointed. The context of this image comes in the form of my good friend having a class in a movie theater and his reactions to what it was like to be in such a strange and different learning environment. Based on his shown reactions there is a wonderment to being in a movie theater for a class but there is also a sense peculiarity towards the idea of it mainly seen towards the left side of the image. As for the process of creating the picture I had the idea in my head of radially moving outward from a straight on type of view to the side views of his face while incorporating the theater seats in weird, continuous forms in the background. So I started by simply going through all the pictures and cutting out pieces of his face and the movie theater that would lend to this idea, and from there I just kept experimenting with different positions of those pictures until I liked what I made!