War Photographer Reflection--Nick Kinsley

I very much enjoyed the documentary War Photographer. It presented a compelling view of a subject that I must admit, I hadn't given much thought to before. The thing that surprised me most about the life of a war photojournalist was how much he was able to control his emotions. I assumed the documentary would show in detail how brutal the images one must take can be and the toll it can have on those taking the pictures, and while it did, I think Nachtwey had a very admirable attitude. He realized that getting emotionally worked up was useless in such situations. He is right about that. I would likely find it very hard to control my emotions when being confronted with images of such violence and immorality. I found James Nachtwey's images very powerful. That is why it shocked me how together he was able to keep himself at all times. There must have been times when he felt like he should act more and try to be more involved in stopping some of the more negative aspects of war but to simply take pictures of it is kind of a hard thing to do. The images do their job well. When someone writes something to describe it, sometimes it does not come across how terrible it really is, but a picture might be able to make it more real. Even though it is a cliche, sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. I think news photographs can play a huge role in shaping world events. When people are actually able to get their eyes on something it can do wonders to actually make them realize what is going on. You could read articles about war times and it can seem real and upsetting but it is a whole new monster when you actually see a picture. It can inspire people to get involved and care about these issues.