Come visit me and use my bathroom

Sitting on the toilette I read an article in the GEO magazine from May 1985. It was about an American photographer called James Nachtwey. There´s so much reporting about war (it´s maybe there is so much war), but often you get the feeling that these people try to profit from the pain and suffering of people in "war-like situations". But he wrote something else, he wrote something you can comprehend and what´s human:

"There is war since there is mankind. And the more civilized the people, the more effective, the more cruel their methods of destruction of the fellow men. [...] Since the 8th of May in 1945 there has been not a single day in the world without war, even though nowhere war has been officially declared according to international law. [...] World War 2 has cost 50 million lives and since then at least 35 million people died in warlike conflicts. [My remark: it´s 1985, there has been no Kosovo War, no Rwandan Genocide and no Gongo War ...to name a few]
Why do I photograph the war? Is photography able to do something against a human behaviour that lasts history? You think it´s sheer a ridiculously exaggerated vision. But that´s exactly this vision that drives me to picture war. I see the big chance for photography to awake a sense of humanity. If war is a consequence of the breakdown of communication and understanding, then photography is a kind of understanding and the opposite of war. [...] If every person could see with his own eyes what phosphor does to the face of a child or how a stray shell splinter rips off one leg of the man next to you, then everybody should understand that no conflict in this world justifies to do these things to a person, let alone millions of them.
My biggest problem as a photographer of war is that I could profit from the sorrow of others. This thought follows me every day[...]"

Check out the homepage for his photography!

*UPDATE: Thanks to this guy I got to know that there´s a film about Nachtwey called War Photographer!