“If I do not take pictures, it will not be known,” was her motto. The power of her images lies in the gift of recognizing the special in one specific moment and to show what the machinery of war with the affected people does.
«I only do my work to report on the courage of people with my camera and my heart»
Anja Niedringhaus
Pictures who refer to human violability
Photo reporting always has something to do with people, and it always has a documentary character. Anja Niedringhaus‘ photographs document war.
For all their dramatic nature, these documents bearing witness to war are more than one-dimensional depictions of reality. The camera does not simply reflect what happened to be in front of the lens at a particular moment. Anja Niedringhaus‘ work is a reflection of her will that determines moment in time, motif, perspective and cropped section. And she takes a stance, as otherwise the image would get lost in the arbitrariness of the moment. What face does war have? In how much detail do we want to see it? Can we endure it at all? Anja Niedringhaus had no-frills reality right before her eyes. Yet her photographs spare our feelings: they let us sense the horror by degrees of approximation and refer to human violability in the midst of complete destruction. (Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, www.deutscheboersephotographyfoundation.org)
War photography
Sports photography
