Photographer James Nachtwey wins $250,000 Heinz Award

New York-based photographer James Nachtwey, who grew up in Leominster and has documented war, genocide and famine around the world for more than two decades, today won a $250,000 Heinz Award in arts and humanities.

His coverage of wars and hot spots around the globe, includes the dreaded situational depiction of Sudan, Somalia and Bosnia. Nachtwey is a seven-time winner of the Magazine Photographer of the Year award, and has also covered the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York.

Nachtwey, the first photographer to receive the prize, did not know he was under consideration, though considering the modest fact of winning the Magazine Photographer of the Year award for not less than seven times as mentioned. The award is given periodically in five categories by the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Family Foundation.

"It came out of the blue," Nachtwey, 58, said in a telephone interview. "I am not in the art world, so to speak. I consider myself a documentary photographer. To be recognized for the arts award is surprising."

Nachtwey was honored for his coverage of wars and hot spots around the globe and is the recipient of an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the Massachusetts College of Art.

Nachtwey was the subject of a 2001 Oscar-nominated documentary, “War Photographer,” and has won many national and international photography awards. His work has been exhibited at galleries in New York, Paris, Rome, Boston, Los Angeles and other cities.

A self-taught photographer, Nachtwey has zoomed in on orphans in Romania, heroin addicts in Pakistan, famine victims in Sudan and wounded and dying soldiers in Kosovo and Nicaragua. His work has appeared in Time magazine, the New Yorker, Esquire, Business Week and the New York Times.

Heinz Kerry (Teresa Heinz Kerry is Chairman of the prestigious Heinz Awards) said ``It's a reality approach. He particularly is valuable and impressive as an artist as well as a photographer.''

Being a Time Magazine chief photographer Nachtwey has already got three books under his belt with his most recent book, "Inferno," which the late Richard Avedon called "the most painful and beautiful book in the history of photojournalism," documented war victims in Romania, Sudan, Somalia, Bosnia and other Third World countries.

As a Time magazine photographer in 2003, Nachtwey was injured by a grenade explosion in Iraq. He was on patrol with the U.S. Army in Baghdad when a grenade was tossed into their Humvee.

He started working as a newspaper photographer in 1976 at a small newspaper in New Mexico. In 1980, he moved to New York and began working as a freelance photographer.

Nachtwey has traveled the globe as a war photographer for 'Time Magazine' for two decades.

Other winners of the Heinz Award include

1. Paul T. Anastas, who has been the pioneers of “green chemistry,” seeks an idea to reduce chemical waste by using new, environmental friendly compounds in everyday products and chemical processes.

2. Bruce Katz, founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.

3. Leroy Hood, owner of 14 biomedical patents, including the DNA sequencer that laid the foundation for the Human Genome Project.

4. Elma Holder, an advocate for the elderly and founder of the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, who won the Heinz Awards' Chairman's Medal.

The Heinz Awards were created to provide a message of inspiration regarding the power of the individual in the American society.

Established by Teresa Heinz in 1993 to honor the memory of her late husband, U.S. Senator John Heinz, is based on the philosophy of philanthropy.