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Inferno
This is the only major monograph of humanitarian and photojournalist James Nachtwey, five-time winner of the Robert Capa Medal for Photography. Featuring brutally compassionate photographs taken from 1990-99, inspired by an overwhelming belief in the human possibility of change, this volume is a definitive selection from Nachtwey's astonishing portfolio. It documents today's conflicts and their victims, from Somalia's famine to genocide in Rwanda, from Romania's abandoned orphans and 'irrecoverables' to the lives of India's 'untouchables', from war in Bosnia to conflict in Chechnya. Inferno is an evocative visual insight into modern history, bringing it disturbingly close to our consciousness.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
About the author
Lucy Sante
97 books206 followersLucy Sante was born in Verviers Belgium and emigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. Since 1984, she has been a teacher and writer, and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. Her publications include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, and The Factory of Facts and Folk Photography. She currently teaches creative writing and the history of photography at Bard College in New York State.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 2, 2022
“I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.” - James Nachtwey
This book was too heavy to witness all those images. Too much depressing but if you want to know what humanity is you must check it out. That's it, i am too numb to write anything anymore about this book ..
This book was too heavy to witness all those images. Too much depressing but if you want to know what humanity is you must check it out. That's it, i am too numb to write anything anymore about this book ..
September 20, 2010
Heartsick, reeling, gasping, weeping. Human, flawed, broken, unable to atone, unable to understand, unable to explain.
This book exists. You exist. Therefore you have a responsibility to look at it, to bear witness, to take something of hope away from it.
Know, going into it, that nothing can ever be the same again. The seen cannot be unseen. These images will sear themselves into your psyche to simmer, and you will not be unchanged.
This book exists. You exist. Therefore you have a responsibility to look at it, to bear witness, to take something of hope away from it.
Know, going into it, that nothing can ever be the same again. The seen cannot be unseen. These images will sear themselves into your psyche to simmer, and you will not be unchanged.
August 26, 2020
The epitome of melodramatic, vaguely exploitative, one-note photojournalism. (For a counter-example, see Luc Delahaye, who is actually talented and knows something about composition, vs. Nachtwey's gimmicky duotone work.)
Also the way that Nachtwey talks about his own work is strangely off-putting; he really seems to think that it wouldn't occur to the average person to be against horrific violence if not for his photos?
Also the way that Nachtwey talks about his own work is strangely off-putting; he really seems to think that it wouldn't occur to the average person to be against horrific violence if not for his photos?
May 27, 2012
This is an incredible book. I have the large format hard cover from Phaidon and I highly recommend it because the quality of the photographs is incredible. While this is painful at times to read or look at, it is also an amazing testament to what people go through.
September 19, 2010
I bought this book sight unseen the instant it was published. I was vaguely familiar with Nachtwey’s work, at that point in my life I was suffering under the delusion that my photography skills would translate into world shattering images. A delusion thankfully dispelled by Inferno. However, it was Nachtwey’s ethical demeanor that made me seek out this volume. There’s something fascinating about such a quiet man with unshakable conviction, a hyper-accurate moral compass and a gift for visual composition that shines a ray of clarity into the most muddled, contemporary crises.
My plan was simple, buy the book and then write an essay of sorts for each image. It was an expensive book so I wanted to make the most of my experience with it.
And so it arrived on my doorstep. Large as a Gutenberg bible, massive and beautiful. I sat down, pen and paper in hand, and prepared for my first step into a much larger, much darker world. It only took moments for my plans to melt away. Despite Inferno’s scale and content, it is a book that is meant to be absorbed in a single perusal. There is a pace and rhythm to the images, to the places depicted, which pulls you into them and far from anything resembling a comfort zone. Four hours vanished from my life and I was forever altered.
My career in children’s literature is deeply influenced by this book and James Nachtwey’s entire oeuvre. I do, somewhat optimistically, believe that ideas change the world and that to affect change requires the clearest, well composed ideas that the creative mind can conjure. Inferno is by far the best example of such an endeavor that I have ever seen.
My plan was simple, buy the book and then write an essay of sorts for each image. It was an expensive book so I wanted to make the most of my experience with it.
And so it arrived on my doorstep. Large as a Gutenberg bible, massive and beautiful. I sat down, pen and paper in hand, and prepared for my first step into a much larger, much darker world. It only took moments for my plans to melt away. Despite Inferno’s scale and content, it is a book that is meant to be absorbed in a single perusal. There is a pace and rhythm to the images, to the places depicted, which pulls you into them and far from anything resembling a comfort zone. Four hours vanished from my life and I was forever altered.
My career in children’s literature is deeply influenced by this book and James Nachtwey’s entire oeuvre. I do, somewhat optimistically, believe that ideas change the world and that to affect change requires the clearest, well composed ideas that the creative mind can conjure. Inferno is by far the best example of such an endeavor that I have ever seen.
March 9, 2019
“A photograph can enter the mind and reach the heart with the power of immediacy. It affects that part of the psyche where meaning is less dependent upon words and makes an impact more visceral, more elemental, closer to raw experience”.
Nachtway’s Inferno is a brutal book.
It documents conflicts from around the world and shows us both the abyss of war and the horrors and tragedies of day to day life during and after a conflict.
We are often told there are no real winners in war.
Looking at these images it is hard to disagree.
This is not a book to be savoured or enjoyed. It is an important document of the atrocities of war.
Dismemberment, rotting corpses, weapons, scarred walls, starvation, death & more death.
Inferno is a shocking, violent look at the human cost of conflict and an undeniable reminder that we should be better than this.
That the human race can be more than this. That war is undeniably and unreservedly bad.
That these images are so recent and so grotesque is a reminder of the strength of photography and the importance of objective photo journalism.
Nachtway’s Inferno is a brutal book.
It documents conflicts from around the world and shows us both the abyss of war and the horrors and tragedies of day to day life during and after a conflict.
We are often told there are no real winners in war.
Looking at these images it is hard to disagree.
This is not a book to be savoured or enjoyed. It is an important document of the atrocities of war.
Dismemberment, rotting corpses, weapons, scarred walls, starvation, death & more death.
Inferno is a shocking, violent look at the human cost of conflict and an undeniable reminder that we should be better than this.
That the human race can be more than this. That war is undeniably and unreservedly bad.
That these images are so recent and so grotesque is a reminder of the strength of photography and the importance of objective photo journalism.
July 21, 2012
Brilliant photography, great important book. I call it the book of the dead. its so depressing and so real.
June 1, 2017
Without doubt the heaviest book - literally and figuratively - of photography I've ever read.
May 9, 2012
The heaviest book on earth. Oh my fuck what this guy has seen. And what a photographer!
Remember that scene from Pirates of the Caribbean? I think it's supposed to be, sort of, the heart of the film, where the pirates are all in a quandary and don't know what to do. So they ask the old pirate played by Keith Richards something to the effect of: "You've been all around the world, sailed all the seas, stared into the darkest of human hearts? What would you do?"
It's so obvious those lines are written expressly for Richards. There's this weird romantic image of him in the public imagination that just because he took loads of drugs and pushed his body to certain limits, that he's been to hell and back, and now he returns to dispense his insights into the Dark Side.
Screw him, and his managers and PR guys and minders. Keith lives in a rarefied world where if he wants shepherd's pie at 4.30 in the morning suddenly there's twelves blokes on cellphones phoning every eating house in LA trying to get shepherds pie.
No, my friends. Keith Richards knows jack-shit about the dark side compared to James Nachtwey. And I'm sure Nachtwey will be the first to inform us: there's nothing romantic about a journey to the darkest corners of the human heart.
Remember that scene from Pirates of the Caribbean? I think it's supposed to be, sort of, the heart of the film, where the pirates are all in a quandary and don't know what to do. So they ask the old pirate played by Keith Richards something to the effect of: "You've been all around the world, sailed all the seas, stared into the darkest of human hearts? What would you do?"
It's so obvious those lines are written expressly for Richards. There's this weird romantic image of him in the public imagination that just because he took loads of drugs and pushed his body to certain limits, that he's been to hell and back, and now he returns to dispense his insights into the Dark Side.
Screw him, and his managers and PR guys and minders. Keith lives in a rarefied world where if he wants shepherd's pie at 4.30 in the morning suddenly there's twelves blokes on cellphones phoning every eating house in LA trying to get shepherds pie.
No, my friends. Keith Richards knows jack-shit about the dark side compared to James Nachtwey. And I'm sure Nachtwey will be the first to inform us: there's nothing romantic about a journey to the darkest corners of the human heart.
September 27, 2007
This is a book of photographs taken by James Nachtwey, famous (Anti) War photographer. He is probablly the best photojournalist ever and his photos are an honest and personal account to the horrors of war, poverty, and famine. It's difficult to look at his pictures and not be overcome by emotion but he maintains a hopefulness for humanity that is always apparent in his work. I am amazed that when faced with such horrendous situations he can manage to compose a beautiful and rich photograph but his belief in the human spirit and the idea that his work will reach others to inspire them to take action to stop such terrible atrocities from occuring help him to continue to put himself in harms way.
November 6, 2008
The man who published this book is a great/ famous phtographer. he photgraphs for time magazine- on a variety of social topics. The pictures in this book are graphic and gruesome. it was meant to be a coffee table talk picture book. its made up of pictures reflecting poverty, war, genocide, etc. while it gets you to think and talk about the issues which he photographed, some of the pictures will literally shock the consicence.
May 29, 2017
یک عکس میتواند وارد ذهن شود و با قدرتی بی واسطه به قلب نفوذ کند. همچنین عکس بر قسمتی از ذهن ما که در آن معنی وابستگی کمتری به کلمات دارد تاثیر میگذارد و باعث میشود تا حسی غریزی، اصیل و بکر را تجربه کنیم
من شاهد بوده ام که خداوند برای جلوگیری از این حوادث و کشتارها دخالتی نمیکند. ما همدیگر را داریم. ما خودمان مشکلات را بوجود میآوریم ، پس وظیفه ماست که آن ها را حل کنیم
من شاهد بوده ام که خداوند برای جلوگیری از این حوادث و کشتارها دخالتی نمیکند. ما همدیگر را داریم. ما خودمان مشکلات را بوجود میآوریم ، پس وظیفه ماست که آن ها را حل کنیم
Want to read
July 23, 2007if you have some extra time on your hands and your not looking for some sort of escapism, watch "war photographer."
this guy is unbelievable, and the documentary shows only a piece of him. his photographs are disturbing and beautiful.
this guy is unbelievable, and the documentary shows only a piece of him. his photographs are disturbing and beautiful.
August 16, 2007
Beautiful and haunting. Challenges one's view of the world both ideologically and visually.
November 30, 2007
Whenever I get to feeling sorry for myself I open this book...
Read
March 20, 2008Nachtwey's photos are beautiful and ugly. Please view them and think about what we choose to offer humanity.
November 27, 2008
Ugh, talk about big impact. I couldn't wait to put it down. Actually, more like hide it from the children.
December 2, 2012
The heaviest Book in my shelf. It Shows The real live without any make up. Nachtway is The Master of war. A Must have Book.
August 31, 2015
Horrifying!
January 3, 2017
Demasiada belleza dentro de tanta crueldad. Un libro impresionante tanto por su formato como por la belleza de su impresión. El horror magníficamente documentado.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews