Fotografiska Talks: James Nachtwey and Brent Pere

I don't travel as much to war zones as I did in the, at the height of my career, which...

And I was doing it then pretty much nonstop.

But the, the nature of the industry has changed.

Um, so there's, there's less of that.

But I, I, I had a good long run of about 40 years or so.

Uh, so I think I've, you know, made my contribution and there's still more to do, but it's, it's a little slower now.

You have done it for almost five decades.

Uh, as you said, the world is changing quickly.

How much has the, uh, the ch- photojournalism about the, uh, wars have changed?

Well, the whole nature of photojournalism has changed dramatically in the last, I'd say, seven to 10 years.

Um, the magazine...

I, I worked for print magazines, mainly.

Time Magazine was, was my main client.

I had a contract with Time up until 2018, and I was on the, on the go constantly.

They had budgets, they had more pages, they had advertisers, they had, you know, the audience.

And I think with the coming of online publications, all that changed dramatically.

So there are fewer pages, virtually no assignments anymore.

So the, the, the industry itself has changed and I feel Fortunate that I, I worked for so many decades at a time when it was really, um, you know, full on

Do you feel that the quality has, uh, gone down as well? Because now everyone can make the pictures with iPhones, which are not, like, too artistic.

[laughs]

Well, I think, I think iPhone photographs by, you know, ordinary citizens can be very valuable.

They, I don't think they replace the work of trained journalists who have insight and have talent and experience.

But, um, citizens with iPhones can capture something that, where journalists don't happen to be at the time, so they, th- they, they expand our, um, ability to have an awareness of what's going on in the world.

But it, you know, it's, it's ...

the two coexist.