[Punishment on an American chain gang]

 [Written by Megan]  

                  
The Festival of the Photograph has officially begun and the highlight for the journalism wing of the photo community is the appearance of James Nachtwey, a journalist who’s been named “best in the world” so many times by so many organizations, it’s hard to list them all.  Photojournalists refer to him as a monk, a prophet. Nachtwey has made it his life mission a witness to all the pain that we are capable of creating and all that we are vulnerable to receiving. 

He speaks on Saturday, June 14 from 4-6pm at the Paramount Theater and the collection of his work titled “Unvanquished” is appearing at the split level gallery of Les Yeux du Monde.  The name says it all: the images are of people who by all means should be conquered and defeated, but the photos promote their inherent human dignity and give them a voice that their oppressors would deny.

[Famine victim sewn into burial shroud]

The work spans nearly 25 years, crossing the globe to show famine, war and health crisises. The photos are of dying men and those left grieving at their funerals.  Of murderers and those that were murdered. 

It can be unnerving seeing these images in a gallery setting, without captions or a news context.  But keeping to what he refers to as “the discipline of the frame,” Nachtwey includes details to the stories layered within the image.  The elements he has chosen to include in each frame are the raw materials of humanity and their power to move us is greater than words.

The most compelling part of the exhibit is the 28 image tight grid of photos from Romania, bearing witness to the inhuman treatment of the mentally ill, particularly of orphaned children.  Nudity, madness and paranoia scream out from the haunted eyes in the grid.  The photos are side by side, with no space to breathe. We see five boys sharing a bathtub with a sixth trying to climb in. Three boys huddle on bed springs with no mattress to comfort them.  It’s claustrophobic. 

[An orphanage for ” incurables”]

Not blind to his native country, Nachtwey turns his lens on America, too, including a nine image series on the American justice system, from crime to police to prison.  Like a magnet for violence, he was in New York on September 11, 2001.  There is even a single image from Charlottesville, a pensive photo of a young man and an American flag.

The final impression of the show is the unspoken contract in every image: the subjects allow Nachtwey to photograph true and horrible moments so that he may tell their story.  That contract ultimately lands on us to act.

Climbing back up the stairs of the gallery, you see an image you might have missed going down.  On the back of an dividing wall is a giant image of a row of women in burkas, taken in Iraq in 2003.  They are dressed entirely in black, a virtual black mountain range in front of a blue sky, with one single hand reaching out, asking for a handout or a hand up or just help.  Near the glare from the window of the gallery, the details of the burkas are lost.  We cannot see the texture of the fabric.  We can only see ourselves reflected in the glass.  I saw myself, the other photographers around me gazing at the work and that lone hand reaching out, asking everyone who could see the image for help.

(Les Yeux du Monde is located at 115 South First Street in downtown Charlottesville and will be open 11-8 Friday and Saturday.)

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