Category: Obituaries

  • China: "citizen journalist" beaten to death – Boing Boing

    China: “citizen journalist” beaten to death – Boing Boing: “Wei Wenhua was beaten to death after he snapped photos of a confrontation on the street between village residents and authorities. His death has sparked controversy in Chinese media, and the blogosphere: Wei Wenhua was a model communist and is now a bloggers’ hero — a…

  • PJ Dmitry Chebotayev Killed in Iraq

    PJ Dmitry Chebotayev Killed in Iraq

    From PDN: Photojournalist Dmitry Chebotayev was killed in a bombing Sunday while on assignment in Iraq, according to news reports and his agency, World Picture News. Chebotayev was traveling with U.S. forces in Diyala province when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. Six American soldiers were killed and two were wounded, according…

  • Don McPhee, 1945-2007

    Don McPhee, 1945-2007

    All too often newspaper photographers just vanish. As the witnesses of history we are rarely written into it. And we often like it that way. We want to be invisible. Photographer Don McPhee passed away after a long career with the English newspaper The Guardian. There is a great slideshow of his work narrated by…

  • Ruth Bernhard — photographer of nudes and still lifes

    Ruth Bernhard — photographer of nudes and still lifes

    SFGate: “To be a photographer was a gift of the gods,” she said in a Chronicle profile by Kenneth Baker, written in 2001. “I can’t imagine anything that would have been better.” Biographer Margaretta Mitchell’s book, “Ruth Bernhard: The Eternal Body,” contains the artist’s own assessment of her adopted home. “To me … San Francisco…

  • In a Risky Place to Gather News, a Very Familiar Story

    In a Risky Place to Gather News, a Very Familiar Story

    NYT: Russia is unquestionably a dangerous place for journalists — less so than only Iraq and Algeria, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Thirteen of them have been killed since Mr. Putin came to power in 2000, a little more than two a year on average. The killings — and the failure to solve…

  • Journalist Critical of Chechen War Is Shot Dead

    Journalist Critical of Chechen War Is Shot Dead

    NYT: Anna Politkovskaya was found dead by a neighbor shortly after 5 p.m. A Makarov 9-millimeter pistol had been dropped at her side, the signature of a contract killing, Vitaly Yaroshevsky, the deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, said in a telephone interview. “We are certain that this is the horrible outcome of her journalistic activity,”…

  • Chechen war reporter found dead

    Chechen war reporter found dead

    BBC: Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist known as a fierce critic of the Kremlin’s actions in Chechnya, has been found dead in Moscow. She was found shot dead near her home in a block of flats in the capital. A pistol and four bullets were found near her body, the Interfax news agency said, quoting…

  • From Annie Leibovitz: Life, and Death, Examined

    From Annie Leibovitz: Life, and Death, Examined

    NYT: In 1998 Ms. Sontag received a diagnosis of cancer, from which she recovered. Ms. Leibovitz took several months off to be with her. There are photographs of that period too, of Ms. Sontag receiving chemotherapy, having her hair cut. “You know, one doesn’t stop seeing,” Ms. Leibovitz said, when asked about her impulse to…

  • Sven Nykvist, 83, a Master of Light in Films, Dies

    NYT: “I was fortunate to work with Ingmar,” he said in 1995. “One of the things we believed was that a picture shouldn’t look lit. Whenever possible, I lit with one source and avoided creating double shadows, because that pointed to the photography.” In his films, especially those with Mr. Bergman, light assumed a metaphysical…

  • The Death of a Fighter

    DigitalJournalist: I had never met Catherine Leroy before doing the interviews for my book Shooting Under Fire in 2002. I had heard the legends, of course; how she arrived in Vietnam in 1966 with one Leica, no experience and even less money; how she parachuted with the 173rd Airborne in a combat operation; how she…

  • War Photographer Catherine Leroy Dies In California

    From PDN: Leroy was part of a generation of photojournalists who made their names in Vietnam – some others include David Burnett, Don McCullin, Gilles Caron, Larry Burrows, Tim Page and Dirck Halstead – by taking advantage of the access afforded to journalists there. “We rode in military planes, did helicopter assaults during operations, walked…

  • Fausto Vitello, R.I.P.

    Fausto Vitello, R.I.P.

    From Supertouch: Fausto Vitello, publisher of Juxtapoz & Thrasher magazines & a seminal figure in the worlds of skateboarding & underground art died suddenly on Saturday afternoon, April 22, 2006. Check back for updates as they become available. This photo of F.V. was taken in 1978. He will be missed… Here.

  • Tribute to Gordon Parks

    From The Digital Journalist, a series of remembrances and photo galleries on the late photographer Gordon Parks: We at The Digital Journalist want to acknowledge that with his death on March 7th of this year not only has photography lost a giant, but so too has humanity, so we offer in this issue a mix…

  • Thomas J. Abercrombie dies; Photographer for National Geographic

    From the Washington Post: Mr. Abercrombie dived with Jacques Cousteau, which he said was “like swimming with a fish.” While suffering from typhoid in the Himalayas, he amputated the frozen toes of a pilgrim as gangrene set in. He slipped off his yak in Afghanistan and narrowly escaped plunging into a 1,000-foot chasm. In Venezuela,…

  • British cameraman shot by Israelis was murdered, says jury

    From the Mail & Guardian: The shooting death of British cameraman James Miller by an Israeli soldier in Gaza was murder, an inquest jury found on Thursday. The jury also said Israeli authorities had “not been forthcoming” about how and why Miller (34) was killed by a single shot fired by the soldier. Here.

  • The Web This Morning

    Artist- Michael Slack Game Art – I am 8 bit Photography – Preparations for Khmer Rouge trials, Cambodia, by John Vink, Magnum Photos NYT – The Wild Web of China NYT – Gordon Parks, Master of the Camera, Dies at 93