James Nachtwey was born on March 14th 1948, in Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Nachtwey graduated from Dartmouth College in 1970, where he studied Political Science and Art History.
He was greatly influenced by photographs of the American Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War and thus his passion for photography was born.
He began working as a newspaper photographer for the Albuquerque Journal in New Mexico in 1976 and in 1980 he moved to New York to focus on freelance magazine photography.
In 1981, he was assigned his first foreign assignment covering civil strife in Northern Ireland during the IRA hunger strike.
Since 1984, Nachtwey has been a contract photographer for Time and was a founding member of VII photo agency but has since disassociated.
While covering the U.S. Invasion of Iraq, Nachtwey was injured from an insurgent grenade but recovered to travel to Southeast Asia to cover the Boxing Day tsunami of 2001.
Nachtwey has produced photo essays in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.
He has received numerous awards including two World Press Photo awards, the Canon Photo Essayist award and five Robert Capa Gold Medals.
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