Co Rentmeester

Rentmeester in front of his picture, that became World Press Photo of the Year 1967

Jakobus Willem „Co“ Rentmeester (also Ko Rentmeester; born February 28, 1936 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch rower. He later became a photojournalist and covered e.g. the Vietnam war.

Life and career

Rentmeester competed for the Netherlands at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. In the 1960s he moved to the United States and studied photography at the Art Center College in Los Angeles.

After his Bachelor in Arts he started his career as a freelance photographer in 1965 for Life.[1] He first covered the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, where he documented many of the dramatic events, which earned him first accolades as a photographer.

Between 1966 and 1969 he was in Asia, where he particularly covered the Vietnam war. One of his pictures showed the commander of an M48 Patton looking through his lens. It was selected as World Press Photo of the Year and notably it was the first colour photograph to win the award.

After he was wounded by a Vietcong sniper near Saigon, he returned to the States. In 1972 his pictures from a travel through Indonesia were exposed in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

In the following years Rentmeester worked for several magazines, as a photojournalist and as an advertising photographer.

Awards

Publications

External links

References

  1. ↑ Co Rentmeester, Pim Milo, July 9, 2006. Dutch