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| 05-10-2012, 06:13 PM | #1 |
| Horst Faas: Requiem Requiem Horst Faas b. Berlin, 1933, died 10th May, 2012  Sad news today that legendary photojournalist and picture editor Horst Faas has died. This article was the first I saw, and was written by Richard Pyle, who co-authored Lost over Laos with Faas, a book on their experiences in the Vietnam War, and their return to the Laos/Vietnam border to search for the site of a 1971 helicopter crash that killed leading photojournalists and friends Larry Burrows and Henri Huet, amongst others. I’d highly recommend this book.  Noted as Faas with camera, unknown date Faas was a great photographer himself, winning two Pulitzer prizes, but was also a principal photo editor of his generation. While he was an Associated Press bureau chief in Saigon Faas insisted on the dissemination of many of what would become the iconic images of the Vietnam conflict – think Eddie Adams’ Saigon street execution, or Nick Ut’s napalm girl running down the road. Haas went against convention to have these images put on the wire. He has also frequently been described as a father-like figure to many of the great Vietnam-era photographers. He continued in a career with AP for fifty years. Faas has also been central in recording the memory of many Vietnam photographers from both sides, publishing and being the subject of many books, and helping to create a permanent exhibition in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, Requiem, a tribute to photographers of the Vietnam/American/French wars from all sides of the conflicts.  Image by Horst Faas, 1964 I visited Requiem in 2009, which is housed in the War Remnants Museum. It’s basic but poignant in the usual Vietnamese way. An amazing thing to see. Here are some interesting snaps, rather relevant today (in this post only the images from the museum are by me).  Image by Henri Huet, friend of Faas, killed 1971 . . . . .  Top LIFE photographer Burrows, friend of Faas, killed 1971 . . . . .  Image from Larry Burrows' seminal 'One Ride with Yankee Papa 13' series . . . . .  Burrows on Yankee Papa 13 . . . . .  See below . . . . .  The kind of things Faas dealt with as bureau chief . . . . .  By Peter Arnett, legendary Kiwi journalist and friend of Faas . . . . .  Capa, probably most famous of all war photographers, and the first killed in the Vietnam conflicts . . . . .  Commemorative wall for photojournalists killed on all sides (some interesting spellings too) . . . . .It’s been interesting to read some of the reactions from top photojournalists today in article comments and through facebook. I learnt about Faas’ death via Joao Silva, another great photographer and member of the Bang-Bang Club (another book I’d recommend, and it discusses Faas too) who lost both his legs in Afghanistan last year, a reminder of the hazards and bravery people like Faas faced in taking their images. Nick Ut, who’s still at AP, has also written some touching things.  Celebrating Nick Ut's Pulitzer. Ut centre, Faas to his immediate left . . . . .  Ut and Faas more recently What I find especially touching is that Faas, born in Berlin in 1933, had a childhood dominated by war, but then spent much of the rest of his life trying to show how terrible it was to others. He was one of the defining individuals in developing what photojournalism meant in the second half the twentieth century.  From Requiem exhibition . . . . .  Image by Horst Faas, 1965 . . . . .  The camera of Larry Burrows, photojournalist and friend of Faas, recovered from the site of 1970 helicopter crash in 1996. . . . . . . Further information: Remembering Larry Burrows The Saigon Execution Journalists revisit Vietnam Journalists come home Pyle on death NYT on death TIME on death I’ll be putting up some more images of Requiem later on my blog Last edited by CWyatt; 05-10-2012 at 07:27 PM. | |
| 05-11-2012, 01:10 PM | #3 |
| 05-13-2012, 07:54 AM | #5 |
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