I just found an old interview with James Nachtwey and appreciated this quote:

I don’t use the formal elements of photography for their own sake. I don’t use what’s happening in the world to make statements about photography, I use photography to make statements about what’s happening in the world. I’m a witness and I want my testimony to be eloquent.

Also this:

I don’t usually barge in. People need to understand who I am, what I am doing. In order for me to be comfortable, they have to be comfortable and then I can work in an uninhibited way, and that’s the way I do my best work.

Interested? You can watch Natchwey’s presention at TED including a selection of his photos (just be warned it’s really not for everyone).

I have a book by Sebastiao Salgado, but so far I’ve passed on Nachtwey. His work is so hard to look at. I can see my wife bursting into tears at the sight of some of his photos, and my own reactions are troubling. Nachtwey says: “Beauty is not my goal. If there is any beauty in my work, it’s in the eye of the beholder…Perhaps the sense of perceived beauty is what nature has given us to make tragedy acceptable to our souls.” The fact that I can appreciate some of Nachtwey’s photos as great art, let alone find beauty in them, is disturbing.