I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.
James NachtweyRead
I don't think tragic situations are necessarily devoid of beauty.
Interpretation
Tragic situations can hold an unexpected beauty that reveals deeper truths about life.
This quote suggests that even in the midst of tragedy, there exists a certain beauty that can arise, prompting us to reflect on the complexities of human experiences. It encourages us to look beyond the surface of sorrow and despair, recognizing that from even the darkest moments can emerge profound insights and delicate nuances that highlight the resilience of the human spirit.
In practice
In a speech about resilience after natural disasters.
I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.
I became a photographer in order to be a war photographer, and a photographer involved in what I thought were critical social issues. From the very beginning this was my goal.
I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.
If you want to connect with people who are in distress and great grief and scared, you need to do it in a certain way. I move kind of slow. I talk kind of slow. I let them know that I respect them.
[Photography] puts a human face on issues which, from afar, can appear abstract or ideological or monumental in their global impact.
If Im feeling outraged, grief, disbelief, frustration, sympathy, that gets channeled through me and into my pictures and hopefully transmitted to the viewer.
It is not the germs we need worry about. It is our inner terrain.
Freedom can be destroyed, not just by its retraction, but also by its abuse.
If there is one thing clear about the centuries dominated by the factory and the wheel, it is that although the machine can make everything from a spoon to a landing-craft, a natural joy in earthly living is something it never has and never will be able to manufacture.
There are many gods . . . gods of beauty and magic, gods of the garden, gods in our own backyards, but we go off to foreign countries to find new ones, we reach to the stars to find new ones--. . . . The god of the church is a jealous god; he cannot live in peace with other gods.
He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it, is a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil.
Everything that happens today is like something in the past, but it's also unlike things in the past. We never know until an event happens if it's the similarities or differences that matter more.
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