Horst Faas
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Horst Faas (born 27 April 1933 in Berlin, Germany) is a photo-journalist and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for photography who is best-known for his images of the Vietnam War.
Faas began his photographic career in 1951 with the Keystone Agency, and by the age of 21 he was already covering major events concerning Indochina, including the peace negotiations in Geneva in 1954. In 1956 he joined the Associated Press (AP), where he acquired a reputation for being an unflinching hard-news war photographer, covering conflicts in Vietnam and Laos, as well as the Congo and Algeria. In 1962, he became AP’s chief photographer for Southeast Asia, and was based in Saigon until 1974. His images of the Vietnam war won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1965. In 1972, he collected a second Pulitzer, for his coverage of the conflict in Bangladesh.
Faas is also famed for his work as a picture editor, and was instrumental in ensuring the publication of two of the most famous images of the Vietnam War. The notorious "Saigon Execution" photograph, showing the summary execution of a Vietcong prisoner by Saigon police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan, taken by Eddie Adams in Saigon on February 1, 1968 was sent under his direction. Nick Ut's famous "Napalm Girl" photograph caused a huge controversy over at the AP bureau; an editor had objected to the photo, saying that the girl depicted was naked and that nobody would take it. Faas ordered that Ut's photo be sent over the wire.
In 1990, photographer Greg Marinovich submitted a series of graphic photos of a crowd executing a man. Once again, AP editors were uncertain of if the graphic photos should be sent over the wire. One editor sent the images to Faas, who telegrammed back, "send all photos." [1]
[edit] References
- ^ Marinovich, Greg. The Bang-Bang Club. (page needed)
[edit] External links
- Profile of Faas, including an image taken from his 1965 Pulitzer Prizewinning portfolio
- Faas on the "Saigon Execution" photograph
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