Another film night, initially I was hesitant to join the film group this Sunday, as the theme was war and I was admittedly afraid of dealing with the reality of war and the pain and suffering that is the result. The documentary by the renowned Christian Frei, was entitled “War Photographer” which highlights the journey of the life of prolific photographer James Nachtwey.
The film eerily begins with a man seemingly blocking out everything around him, is steadily focused on taking pictures, not only simply pictures but pictures that will make a difference and communicate to the whole world the calamities people face in war zones. There you see what once was, a beautiful painting that probably was from the renaissance time ruined, marred with dirt and soon will be consumed by the fire around it.
This scene is from the Kosovo war, Jim, as he is fondly called, is telling the people’s story of the war aftermath. You see as he takes pictures of grieving families, you see the suffering in their eyes and what they have witnessed. It was surprising to me, that even with the evidence of their suffering, people around me were seemingly detached from their insurmountable pain. We live in the west, and sometimes we live as though those things cannot be true or really happen, a killer shooting someone in the back of the head, cutting an arm off, separating children from their families, ruthless without mercy, a human taking the God-given gift of life from someone. How could the unimaginable happen?
From my perspective, I can relate to innate somewhat ignorance of others and even sometimes guilty of it myself, that unless you have had certain experiences in life, the human mind in a way lack the ability to show compassion and understanding of others, no matter how dreadful the situation is.
The documentary places Jim in various war-torn areas, from Rwanda, to Palestine, and poverty areas of Indonesia to the sulfur mines of Ijen in East Java, Indonesia. Here Jim ensures that he always respects the people, their suffering, their fight. Many people wonder how he can see so much destruction and profound suffering without showing much emotion. His seemingly "unemotion" says it all to me, this is a man that has seen the worst of the worst, mass graves, people dying next to him, people killed in front of him, and for him he has only two choices, life or death, to be consumed or not to be consumed by the emotion. If he for one moment begins to be consumed by emotions it could almost be the death of him, the profound sadness, despair, loss of faith in humanity, his seemingly inability to make a difference would simply drive him to madness and eventually self-destruction.
At the end of the documentary, Jim makes it clear he chooses not to benefit from the suffering of others but in a way has been chosen to be the “messiah” that will use his gift of photography to tell the stories of others, that would otherwise be forgotten or erased from history, he has made the sacrifice of family, friends, health and I am sure other sacrifices in order to tell the untold stories and in somewhat help humanity to recognise the unfathomable injustice of war, and in some way shape our minds to be the generation that will help to prevent these atrocities from happening in our world.
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