Interview: James Nachtwey (Quicktime-Video)

James Nachtwey : war photographer

It is said that as a war photographer, you either become cynical or holy. If there are indeed only these two ways of existing as a war photographer, James Nachtwey belongs to the holy. Nachtwey, a tall and elegant man, appears within the terror which he photographs as if he is surrounded by an aura of being untouchable. He has been everywhere where there have been wars and atrocities have been committed during the last decades: Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, Kosovo, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq and many other countries. But of course, he is not untouchable at all. Serveral times he has been severely injured or illnesses have torn him down. Nevertheless he continues working because of his strong belief that his pictures can make a difference. Nachtwey, convinced of the effect his pictures have on viewers, has never stopped hoping to fight war, hunger and poverty with his work.

What Nachtwey has seen can hardly be described. It is bare horror. And his pictures convey only a part of it, because a picture can not reproduce the sound of a machine gun and the stink of a rotting corpse. These pictures, though, are so strong and overwhelming that they burn into the mind of the beholder. And that is what Nachtwey wants. Nobody should forget the atrocities going on in the world every day, and everybody should — according to his abilities — do something about them: a sublime ideal and a powerful motivation.

James Nachtwey. Chechnya. 1996. Ruins in the center of Grozny.

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Interview with Carla van de Puttelaar (Quicktime-Video) 

A new star on the sky: we have met the photographer Carla van de Puttelaar in Amsterdam. Her passion are women and beauty; or rather the beauty of women. Her models are not for the cover of the high gloss magazines for they are not perfect. Their “stain” is what Carla van de Puttelaar defines as beauty: a very human beauty. A beauty with dignity.

Carla van de Puttelaar. Untitled. 2006. C-print. Weiterlesen… »

Interview with Will McBride (Quicktime-Video)

Will McBride is one of the big painting photographers, or better photographing painters. Frankly, he donates his life to art, and create grand pictures.

In 2004 his photographic lifework was honored with the famous price “Dr.-Erich-Salomon-Preis” of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh).

“Show me”

Cover of “Show me”. German edition. 1973.

The church spoked of his sex-educational book “Show me” as “work of the devil” and tried to ban it from getting published. It tells a story of sexuality which detecs nakedness as a taboo in our so called tolerant society. It tries to find a new approach to a sex education book for children. The punchline of the book Will McBride tells us in our interview.

Because of changed moral views his book “Show me” - similar to Jock Sturges and Sally Mann - is being fight against. Meanwhile the book is banned in the US, in Germany all attempts of conservative groups failed to censor or ban it from publishing. The Bundesprüfstelle (German Agency for the Examination of Media for Young People) has so far rejected the ban.

Will McBride works with a mission: He wants to free man from his sexual immaturity. In restraint sexuality of man he assumes the basic evil of our society.

The end of the world. Will McBride. 1970.

Romy Schneider by Will McBride. Weiterlesen… »

Jock Sturges. Montalivet. France.

Official Filmwebsite: LINE OF BEAUTY AND GRACE  *  A documentary about Jock Sturges

A virulent, aggressive minority has decided that Americans don’t know themselves what it is they should see, and need to be protected by people who are wiser than they are, even if they are only a tiny sliver of the population.
Jock Sturges

All my life I’ve taken photographs of people who Weiterlesen… »