Was there a learning arc for the new technology for Nachtwey?
I tell you, I remember the first day James was shooting with the micro-cam in Indonesia and we looked at the tape and he was very disappointed. I mean, still cameras, of course you don’t hold them out like a video camera as you’re approaching people so the footage was the shaky mess, it wasn’t even usable as avant garde–he didn’t like it, so he did learn to hold out the camera a little bit. But as soon as he started taking pictures he forgot all about the video camera–as soon as he gets his subjects he’s totally absorbed. One of the issues raised in the film was the policy of non-involvement–how do you stand on that? This is one of the deepest problems of that profession. I never had to make that choice in making War Photographer, luckily, filming in Ramallah for instance and capturing the ritual of throwing stones–or in Kosovo right after the war. Injury was so common in those places that there were always emergency crews around so we were never presented with the quandary of shou
