From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

When James Nachtwey graduated from Dartmouth in 1970, he didn't have a career mapped out. So he traveled around the world. Perhaps because the bloodshed in Vietnam was at its height, he became fascinated with war. He taught himself photography and spent hours staring at scenes of conflict in art books and at exhibitions. "Those pictures had the greatest emotional impact on me," Nachtwey recalls. "It seemed to me the most worthwhile thing one could do with a camera."

In 1980 Nachtwey quit his job as a photographer for a New Mexico newspaper and went to Northern Ireland. Since then he has photographed 15 wars and civil conflicts, winning numerous prizes for his work. That's why he was the natural choice to accompany senior correspondent Alessandra Stanley on a four-nation journey for this week's story on child warriors.

Nachtwey has never become jaded by war, which helps explain why his photographs are so powerful. "You're never the same," he says. "Each time, you're left with an awareness of something very dark and cruel that you have to carry with you always. You pay a price, you carry the weight, you lose sleep." To convey that sensibility to others, Nachtwey published a remarkable volume of photographs last year called Deeds of War. It was dedicated to all those who have "helped a stranger and asked for nothing in return."

Journalists often depend on the goodwill of strangers. On assignment, Stanley and Nachtwey learned that Pakistani police were preventing foreigners from crossing the border into Afghanistan. Nachtwey began to grow a beard and donned guerrilla garb in order to pass through in a truck with a group of mujahedin. Stanley crawled into a burlap bag and hid among sacks filled with wheat. "On the one hand, I was scared," she recalls. "On the other hand, I felt absurd." On the way back, Stanley rode openly with the rebels, but dressed in a burka, a head-to-toe Muslim garment. All went smoothly until a border policeman hitched a ride. He sat inches from our costumed journalists for a half-hour trip that seemed like an eternity. "He didn't suspect a thing," says Nachtwey. "Otherwise we would have gone to jail."