Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz . Photo : John Keatley

    You certainly know at least 2 or 3 pictures taken by Annie Leibovitz. Her images helped to create the face of the magazine s RollingStone e Vanity Fair. Annie is a very creative photographer. She is able to capture the brightness of life in her photos.  

   As Annie puts herself into the lives of the people she photograph , and by interacting with them, she can absorb their details and express them thrown beautiful portraits.

Jack White and Meg White ( The White Stripes Band). Photo: Annie Leibovitz

  
    Her pictures for sure uplift many people’s spirits and it makes her job very inspiring for her audience .As she enhances the subjects of what she is going to photograph Annie Leibovitz transforms what could be an ordinary photo into a work of art. Her pictures look to me like stunning paintings.

Keira Knightley. Photo: Annie Leibovitz

The director Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz. Photo : Annie Leibovitz

James Nachtwey and the might of the image

David Turnley, James Nachtwey and a number of other photojournalists under fire during the 1994 elections in South Africa

    "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. "
    
     These are the first words you see when you click on this link: www.jamesnachtwey.com/ 

  
    The photographer James Nachtwey is truly an artist with a cause.

   On the internet, you can find many James Nachtwey pictures in blogs and forums.  I have noticed that people comment on his photos by saying that they feel helpless and not able to stop the situations that the pictures are portraying. This saddens me because the purpose of his work is largely misunderstood. We all can do something. The war is inside of us, the war is us. You don’t need to go to Africa to see hunger, poverty is just next door.

   I think that his pictures are meant to be more than art, they are meant to be journalism.  If you look at his photos and see first how the color and the lights have a good balance, but don’t feel motivated to somehow change those scenes, the purpose is lost.  

Personally, after seeing his pictures, an indescribable feeling arises, something like shock followed by guilt. His pictures speak with us and transfer emotion through a visual language that everyone can understand. Seeing his portraits makes me rethink the role that I must play in this world. It steers my direction and makes me reevaluate what life is worth living for.

   It motivates me but at the same time makes me feel not deserving to be called a human.  While I sit worried with which clothes to wear to the next party, the people in the photographs are suffering in the most appalling ways.

A woman taken to an emergency feeding center in Somalia established by the Irish charity CONCERN waits for food and medical attention. Photo: James Nachtwey

Bardera, Somalia, November 1992.Mother lifts up the body of her child, a famine victim, to bring it to the grave. Photo: James Nachtwey

Sudan, 1993 - Famine victim in a feeding center.. Photo : James Nachtwey

After watching a movie in class about Nachtwey’s job I observe how some of my peers feel down, but the next day they’ve already forgotten and returned to their lives. It makes me wonder that if sometimes his photos rather them making people more sensitive, they actually make people more cold and indifferent to the horrors of war.

   After seeing the same pictures many times, we get used to it and this can provoke the worse result: becoming numb to the pain. We have to fight against the inertia and understand that James Nachtwey takes these pictures in order to convey the impact of the event and to allow those people portrayed to share their suffering with the world so humanity does not forget the tragedy and the same mistakes are never repeated.

Afghanistan, 1996 - Mourning a brother killed by a Taliban rocket. Photo: James Nachtwey

Bosnia, 1993 - Mourning a soldier killed in the civil war. Photo James Nachtwey

James Nachtwey got the TED Prize 2007 and  this was his Wish :

"There's a vital story that needs to be told, and I wish forTED to help me gain access to it and then to help me come up with innovative and exciting ways to use news photography in the digital era."

Check it :

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_nachtwey_s_searing_pictures_of_war.html

Reiko , my japanese host friend

    Reiko san is my host mother, but I actually consider her my “host friend”. She is not a easy person to describe, as I have been noticing that she has a very distinctive personality. I was surprised when I first met her, and she keeps surprising me everyday  with her actions . Our first meeting at school started very differently. The family was about 30 minutes late to meet me, and at the time I was wondering what the reason was, because I thought Japanese people only get late when something really serious happens. When they arrived I was greeted with a very strong hug which I also wasn’t expecting from a Japanese person. In Brazil, we touch people a lot, hold hands and touch shoulders without thinking about it. In Japan, I always try to hold my first reactions because it might be too eccentric for the Japanese standards. When I feel comfortable in a certain environment I talk about everything openly which can be a problem even in Brazil, but with Reiko, when I noticed, I already had said things that could cause a culture shock... Fortunately not with her. Now we have become closer friends, and we feel free to talk about everything. After a while I realized how foreign cultures are important for her as she is always so interested and has been receiving international students in her house for the last four years.

    I can think about two moments that illustrate a little bit of her personality.One day we were walking near a cemetery and I tried to compare Japanese and Brazilian funeral practices. The majority of Japanese are cremated when they die and in Brazil, people are usually buried.  Then, I said “when I die I want to be cremated , because it all ends at once, while staying  under the ground just freaks me out". She was surprised and said she did not want to be cremated at all. The idea of been burned torments her. “ Being buried is much more beautiful”, she said.So, I joked that it might be best for me to die in Japan and she said that perhaps for her, Brazil is a  good place to die. That was a great exchange of cultural ideas.

    Another interesting conversation was about learning Japanese. Reiko has been helping me a lot with my Japanese , but unfortunately I haven’t been making too much progress . Reiko told me she heard from a TV show that it’s very difficult to learn Japanese for a foreigner  because , as some research shows , European languages and Japanese are processed in opposite hemispheres of the brain. That’s why its hard for a Japanese person to speak English also. Reiko speaks  very good English for someone that has never been to an English speaking country . Her explanation for having such English skills  :” Well... because often I don’t think like a Japanese.”