If the twentieth century saw a paradigmal shift in our culture it is probably in the shift from the word to the image. The available technology (satellite communications, digital cameras) allows a fast distribution of coloured images, almost in real time—and we find ourselves immersed in sea of constantly moving images.

What then is the role of concerned still photography as a black and white craft?

James Natchwey, Afghanistan, 1996 - Mourning a brother killed by a Taliban rocket.

In his receiving speech at Tel Aviv University in 2003, when he shared the Dan David Prize ($1,000,000) in the “Present” category with documentary film-maker Frederick Wiseman, James Natchwey talked in terms of war photography as witness.

He said:

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."

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Posted by: STEPHANE | February 28, 2007 10:04 AM

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