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- <text id=90TT1622>
- <title>
- June 18, 1990: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- June 18, 1990 Child Warriors
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> When James Nachtwey graduated from Dartmouth in 1970, he
- didn't have a career mapped out. So he traveled around the
- world. Perhaps because the bloodshed in Vietnam was at its
- height, he became fascinated with war. He taught himself
- photography and spent hours staring at scenes of conflict in
- art books and at exhibitions. "Those pictures had the greatest
- emotional impact on me," Nachtwey recalls. "It seemed to me the
- most worthwhile thing one could do with a camera."
- </p>
- <p> In 1980 Nachtwey quit his job as a photographer for a New
- Mexico newspaper and went to Northern Ireland. Since then he
- has photographed 15 wars and civil conflicts, winning numerous
- prizes for his work. That's why he was the natural choice to
- accompany senior correspondent Alessandra Stanley on a
- four-nation journey for this week's story on child warriors.
- </p>
- <p> Nachtwey has never become jaded by war, which helps explain
- why his photographs are so powerful. "You're never the same,"
- he says. "Each time, you're left with an awareness of something
- very dark and cruel that you have to carry with you always. You
- pay a price, you carry the weight, you lose sleep." To convey
- that sensibility to others, Nachtwey published a remarkable
- volume of photographs last year called Deeds of War. It was
- dedicated to all those who have "helped a stranger and asked
- for nothing in return."
- </p>
- <p> Journalists often depend on the goodwill of strangers. On
- assignment, Stanley and Nachtwey learned that Pakistani police
- were preventing foreigners from crossing the border into
- Afghanistan. Nachtwey began to grow a beard and donned
- guerrilla garb in order to pass through in a truck with a group
- of mujahedin. Stanley crawled into a burlap bag and hid among
- sacks filled with wheat. "On the one hand, I was scared," she
- recalls. "On the other hand, I felt absurd." On the way back,
- Stanley rode openly with the rebels, but dressed in a burka, a
- head-to-toe Muslim garment. All went smoothly until a border
- policeman hitched a ride. He sat inches from our costumed
- journalists for a half-hour trip that seemed like an eternity.
- "He didn't suspect a thing," says Nachtwey. "Otherwise we would
- have gone to jail."
- </p>
- <p>-- Louis A. Weil III
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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