Inferno

Description

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.

James Nachtwey (b.1948) is one of the world’s most highly respected photojournalists. His photographs have appeared regularly in Time, Life, Newsweek and National Geographic.

Luc Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence and The Factory of Facts and, most recently, Walker Evans. He is Visiting Professor at Bard College, New York.

‘Brilliant and often shocking images by the world’s greatest photojournalist.’ (Publishing News)
 
‘Moving’ (British Journal of Photography)‘One of the great contemporary photojournalists … his first collection has been long-awaited …’ (The Times)
 
‘Remarkable … Inferno is the book’s title, but even the sad words of Dante which preface the work (“Through me is the way to the sorrowful city / Through me is the way to join the lost people”) are insufficient preparation for the full panoply of its horrors: images from Romania, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, many familiar, yet here, collected en masse and carefully composed, playing out a chilly coda to the history of the last century … If Inferno can be said to contain any optimism, it lies in its own coda of photographs taken in Kosovo. Not because they are not disturbing – they are – but because of the subsequent Nato intervention which Nachtwey sees as a “turning point” in the world’s relationship with calamity.’ (Peter Aspden, Financial Times)
 
‘Magnum star James Nachtwey may well be the last of the great war photographers, a breed whose images of human suffering can change the world … Nachtwey has just brought out a thematically and physically monumental new book of his work. It is called Inferno and the title is no exaggeration. .. Inferno works on a vast, heavy scale. It is a fitting antidote to illusions about what the last decade really meant.’ (The Herald (Scotland))

‘It is a sad testament to Western news values that we are less at ease with photos of emaciated famine victims than picking over pictures of wealthy superstars whose bones similarly poke through flimsy clothing. It is easy to get sanctimonious when confronted with these pictures but without these terrible images to haunt us we leave history to the spin doctors and media agents who would sanitise our memories of war. As a witness to violence and death, Nachtwey’s lens always sits with the victims – recording the carnage not from the eyes of the soldiers but on the ground with the ordinary people caught up in the terror.’ (The Big Issue)
 
‘500 pages, 15 x 11in, 10lbs, fabulous paper and printing, cool, elegant design and 400 exquisite pictures of horror, suffering, misery and death from the last decade of the 20th century … a vision of hell on earth … Inferno is an extraordinary book … Nachtwey is an image-maker of great talent and maturity.’ (British Journal of Photography)
 
‘Nachtwey himself is acutely conscious of the other role of the documentary photographer: that of bearing witness and furnishing evidence of man’s inhumanity to man. Inferno has been produced with that thought in mind and is being sent out to world leaders and non-government organisations with the active intention that it be viewed as an archive of a decade of conflict. It is undoubtedly a work of art, but the true, unashamed, function of art has always been to transmit a message … With Inferno … James Nachtwey seems to have moved forward in his control of composition and image making … Death rituals from conflicts and famine across the world, for example, are used to bind together the plight of those who will neither meet nor hear of each other’s existence. Emphasis remains on the fact that the last decade of the 20th century was a far from admirable or proud one in the history of humanity … It would be utterly wrong to regard Inferno as just another photography book: in its ambition and achievement it is undoubtedly more than that.’ (Royal Society of Photographers Journal)‘These pictures, unrelenting in the exposure of inhumanity, do not spare us and are not meant to, yet Nachtwey’s belief in their necessity and power puts them among the most hopeful pictures produced in the century.’ (Vicki Goldberg, American Photo)‘One of the 30 most captivating and influential photography books from the last five years.’ (Photo District News)

Additional information

Dimensions	2.125 × 11.25 × 15.25 in
Imprint	Phaidon Press
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09780714838151
ISBN-10	0714838152
Author	James Nachtwey, Luc Sante
Audience	General / adult