War photographer.

It is appropriate that this fine documentary is introduced by that other famous lover of danger, CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour. For decades now James Nachtwey has found it impossible to stay away from conflict. Where most of us are happy reading the Sunday cartoons, Nachtwey is risking his life at the frontlines of whatever conflict ails the world on any given day. As he sadly explains, he is not about to run out of photographic opportunities.

Nachtwey comes over as a compassionate, caring individual who manages to establish close rapport with his subjects, allowing him that special close-up perspective which distinguishes his pictures. Appropriately, the documentary starts with Robert Capa’s famous dictum “If your photos aren’t good enough, you are not close enough”. Nachtwey is always close to the action.

One remarkable aspect of this piece is that Nachtwey uses a video camera – perched on his shoulder, I would guess – while taking his stills, so that you get pretty much the photographer’s view of the action, right down to the LCD panel atop his camera. It’s a little disconcerting how intrusive that seems but once you hear Nachtwey explain how he works with his subjects – and why he seems invisible to them – you understand.

This is a fine documentary but be warned that many of the pictures are very, vary hard to stomach, so if you get queasy at the sight of war pictures you should really avoid this film.

Nachtwey is showing the world what it chooses not to see. Gripping viewing.

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Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe – mentor and parasite?

This documentary is really much more about the rich curator and collector Sam Wagstaff than about the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose tediously mediocre output is testimony to the power of marketing over quality. Repeat the lie often enough and people desperately searching for an opinion to fill the void of their own will beat a path to your door.

Mediocre and tedious as Mapplethorpe’s work may be, it does not detract from Wagstaff’s vision. The latter is best known for amassing a vast collection of vintage photographic images dating back to the very start of photography, a collection which he eventually sold to the Getty Museum, a great sponsor of photography. Not that he needed the money as the Wagstaffs were New York monied elite, but the Getty obviously agreed with his discriminating eye.

Quite why a man with film star looks surrounded by gorgeous fawning women would take the path he did I will leave you to figure out, for I will never understand it, but suffice it to say that his lifestyle choices resulted in a premature death at age 66, almost certainly the result of his protegé’s proclivities which saw them both dead within 2 years of one another.

No matter. Wagstaff made photography collectible and we should all be grateful for that. The documentary is fun to watch and heaps well deserved praise on a visionary photography collector and curator.