James Nachtwey grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Dartmouth College, where he studied Art History and Political Science (1966-70). Images from the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement had a powerful effect on him and were instrumental in his decision to become a photographer. He has worked aboard ships in the Merchant Marine, and while teaching himself photography, he was an apprentice news film editor and a truck driver.

In 1976 he started work as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico, and in 1980, he moved to New York to begin a career as a freelance magazine photographer. His first foreign assignment was to cover civil strife in Northern Ireland in 1981 during the IRA hunger strike. Since then, Nachtwey has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues. He has worked on extensive photographic essays in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.

Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984. He was associated with Black Star from 1980 - 1985 and was a member of Magnum from 1986 until 2001. In 2001, he became one of the founding members of the photo agency, VII. (Bio)

To learn more about James Nachtwey, I strongly recommend watching the documentary War Photographer (Christian Frei, 2001).

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles paid Sotheby’s in London GBP 29.7 million ($45 million) on Wednesday for a sweeping, hazy view of 19th-century Rome by British master J.M.W. Turner.

The sale broke the auction record for Turner four years after the artist’s Venetian seascape “Giudecca, La Donna della Salute and San Giorgio” sold for $35 million at Christie’s.

The Getty beat out five other bidders for “Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino.” The auction house had priced the painting sell for between $18 million and $27 million.

Turner, a Romantic artist known for painting wispy clouds and roiling waves, painted “Modern Rome” in 1839, a decade after he visited the city for a final time. Eschewing any telltale signs of modernization, Turner presents an ethereal view of the Italian capital as seen from atop Capitoline Hill. Women in blue and yellow skirts herd goats in the rocky foreground as the city’s ruins fan across the sun-drenched expanse below. The Coliseum, painted in cappuccino colors, even appears to glow. (more)

Previously on Skandalon

Strange tales of silent destruction and partial fragmentation in Grasso’s work. Here’s what Ed Schad (curator and independant writer working over at ArtSlant) had to say about it:

“Ben Grasso, like many contemporary painters, takes decay as his subject matter, but unlike those painters (often eager to watch the world burn), Grasso seems to follow the enthusiasm of his brushstrokes and the buoyancy of his color into realms laced with whimsy and imagination. His houses are in shreds and crumbling, you see a white flag of surrender, he dashes off a couple of shacks in the jungle, but Grasso doesn’t believe that these ruins denote the end of things — flickers of light shimmer and whirls of white burst into the air.” (read more)

Artist’s statement: “In this series, Eric Rondepierre began to make systematic use of film archives. Working in American archives, the artist systematically viewed fragments of anonymous silent movies that had been corroded by the effects of time, damp and poor storage. He photographed the resulting anomalies (erasures, deformations, blotches). Scènes comprises 18 pieces and shows characters in action.” (Read more)

Previously on Skandalon.

About Ketter’s art: “Ketter constructs flat sculptures, installations and three-dimensional paintings – or a compound of all three categories. His striking painting-cum-sculpture-cum-installations principally recall interior design. They capture moments in condemnation or rebuilding usually of limited duration but here freeze-framed in art. The walls exist in a permanent limbo between the presence of demolition and the eternity of art.” (read more over at Arken Museum of Modern Art).

Artist’s statement: “This series of thirty pieces continues the procedure of the Précis de décomposition. Again, these are images that have become corroded over time. The frames come from colorized films in the Montreal archives. The choice centres on the body and intimacy, and the “justified” titles relate directly to the image.”

Previously on Skandalon.

Cover design for the French edition (éd. Christian Bourgois, coll. 10/18, 1986). Photo of a Los Angeles pool. Name of the artist not mentioned.

Artist’s statement: “A pigment transfer process moves the images from virtual reality to tangible reality. The steps in this process, from the initial computer work to the outsourcing for the actual prints to the transfer of the mirrored prints to the final physical scrubbing and removal of the paper, each step has its own variables, many of which are uncontrollable. The materials of this method are carbon (from the black transfer pigment) calcium (in the gesso and marble dust) and water (used to remove the paper from the transfers)…. these are also a human’s main ingredients. The process involves a combination of chance and control, central to the idea of not being in complete control and to the limitations of any human pursuit, while at the same time, being driven by the operation of creation and destruction. The materials of this method are carbon (from the black transfer pigment) calcium (in the gesso and marble dust) and water (used to remove the paper from the transfers)…. these are also a human’s main ingredients.” (Read much more).