Light in Dark Places

A photojournalist and physician documents his remarkable career.

Trained as a physician and self-taught as a photographer, Matthew Naythons documented many of the most important global and domestic events of his generation. Light In Dark Places encompasses the depth and breadth of his career.

Post-medical school Naythons worked forty-eight-hour emergency room shifts in rural California, which gave him freedom to explore the world of photojournalism as a freelancer, eventually joining Time. He was on one of the last helicopters out of Saigon the morning the city fell, and on the first helicopter into the horror of Jonestown. He covered the Yom Kippur War, the Nicaraguan revolution, and the United States invasion of Grenada, among other stories.

After photographing the exodus of skeletal Cambodian refugees into Thailand in 1979, Naythons laid down his cameras and returned to his first calling. He founded International Medical Teams, which brought American physicians, nurses, and paramedics across the Thai border into Cambodia.

Many of the images in this book bear witness to the aftermath of wars and natural disasters. Yet amid the darkness, his photographs also illuminate luminous moments of life, joy, and hope. “Cameras peer through darkness,” Naythons reflected. “I’ve used mine to shed light in dark places.”