Larry Burrows
[Photographer, b. 1926, London, d. 1971, Laos.]
Do I have the right to carry on working and leave a man suffering? To my mind, the answer is no, you have got to help him... You cannot go through these elements without, obviously feeling something yourself—you cannot be mercenary in this way because it will make you less of a photographer...
Danny Lyon
[Photographer, b. 1942, New York, lives in Ulster County, New York.]
The most unsafe place to be, whether people are using rocks or bullets, is between the lines. You must choose a side, if for no other reason than to have a firm spot on which to stand and a moment’s peace to focus.
Otto Wöhler
[Military leader, b. 1894, Burgwedel, Germany, d. 1987, Burgwedel.]
No photographs will be made of such abominable excesses and no report of them will be given in letters home. The production and the distribution of such photographs and reports on such incidents are looked upon as undermining the decency and discipline in the armed forces and will be severely punished. All existing photographs and reports on such excesses are to be confiscated together with the negatives and are to be sent to the Ic counterintelligence officer of the army giving the name of the producer or distributor.
(July 1941 order to German 11th Army troops operating on the eastern front with holocaust killing squad Einsatzgruppe D, 1941)
Nhem En
[Photographer, b. 1961, Kampong Leng, Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia, lives in Cambodia.]
I knew I was taking pictures of innocent people, but I knew that if I said anything I would be killed.
(En, official photographer at Khmer Rouge torture center Tuol Sleng, estimates he took photographs of 10,000 people arriving at the center. Eight survived.)
Donald McCullin
[Photographer, b. 1935, Finsbury Park, London, lives in Somerset, England.]
I am sometimes accused by my peers of printing my pictures too dark. All I can say is that it goes with the mood of melancholy that is induced by witnessing at close quarters such intractable situations of conflict and joylessness.
I don’t want to die for a few pictures. I want to live for every sunrise I can clap my eyes on; I want to see my family get older; I want to see the world try and get a bit more peaceful and understanding, which unfortunately I don’t think I’ll ever see.
Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]
The problem with photography is that you can decontextualize war. What does a picture of a wounded body, or a mother clasping her wounded child mean? Why is it happening? I want to know that. I’m not satisfied just photographing little sorts of visual climaxes to a conflict. I want to know what led up to it and what’s going to happen next.
James Nachtwey
[Photographer, b. 1948, Syracuse, New York, lives in New York.]
I want my work to become part of our visual history, to enter our collective memory and our collective conscience. I hope it will serve to remind us that history’s deepest tragedies concern not the great protagonists who set events in motion but the countless ordinary people who are caught up in those events and torn apart by their remorseless fury.
