Category: Obituaries

  • Friend's Death Shows Cost of Iraq War – washingtonpost.com

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    The Death of Russian photographer Dmitry Chebotayev.

    In my nightmares, the helicopters still come out of a dark sky, two black spots barely visible against the backdrop of night.

    Their swirling blades grow louder until they finally touch down on earth and fall silent. They look like giant steel bugs from another planet, bulbous robots with eyes of glass coming to take away their prey: seven human beings who woke one day in Iraq not knowing they would be dead by noon.

    Six American soldiers. One Russian photographer.

    Check it out here.

  • JS Online: Iraq copter crash kills area airman

    As an aspiring photojournalist, Christopher Scott Frost wouldn’t stop until he got that one shot that would bring a story to life, his father said Wednesday.
    And as a member of the U.S. Air Force serving in Iraq, he got to employ his relentless pursuit of stories as an editor of a military publication, Gary Frost said.

    “He was ecstatic when one of his stories got picked up by a Spokane, Washington, newspaper,” Gary Frost said in a telephone interview Wednesday night, after learning that his son had been killed in Iraq. “He is esteemed by the people who worked around him for his willingness to tackle any assignment or any mission.”

    According to the U.S. Department of Defense, Staff Sgt. Christopher S. Frost, 24, died Monday near Bayji, Iraq, in a crash of an Iraqi Army Mi-17 helicopter. The circumstances surrounding the crash are under investigation. He was assigned to the 377th Air Base Wing, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.

    Check it out here.

  • Dungeons & Dragons Creator Gary Gygax Passes Away; Interview on Gadgets – Boing Boing

    According to a post on Troll Lord Games, the company that had published his most recent work, Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away

    Check it out here.

  • Theo Westenberger, Magazine And Advertising Photographer, Dies At 57

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    Theo Westenberger, whose versatility with portraits and travel images won her recognition as a top magazine and advertising photographer, has died.

    Westenberger died Thursday at her home in New York after a four-year battle with lung cancer, according to Colleen Keegan, a friend and her artistic executor. She was 57.

    Check it out here.

  • Rick Selvin dies, was writer, editor at Daily News | Philadelphia Daily News | 02/14/2008

    Rick Selvin arrived at the Daily News in 1980 to apply for a job. When he got to then-managing editor Zack Stalberg’s office, he hesitated at the door.

    “I’m really sorry,” Rick said.

    “What are you sorry about?” Zack inquired.

    “Well, I usually wear a necktie to these interviews,” Rick said, “but my tie was frozen in the trunk of my car when it got wet and when I tried to put it on, it broke.”

    Zack, recognizing a guy who would surely become a true Daily News character, hired him on the spot.

    Check it out here.

  • Lynn Demarest; captured vivid moments from around world – The Boston Globe

    Eluned (McLaren) Demarest saw the poverty of India and the ruins of post-World War II Berlin through the lenses of cameras.

    Mrs. Demarest, an award-winning photographer who scoured the world for poignant pictures, died Jan. 28 at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Needham of cardiopulmonary arrest. The Westwood resident was 85.

    Her Welsh name was too hard for most to pronounce, so she was known to most as Lynn. Her work appeared in National Geographic, Newsweek, and other publications, including the Globe, and she produced several books of photography.

    Check it out here.

  • Jorge Lewinski obituary – Times Online

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    :

    Jorge Lewinski was a tireless and vivid chronicler of the world of modern art. If he never quite achieved the public acknowledgement he deserved, this was in part the result of his steadfast – some would say stubborn – vision for his remarkable collection of more than 300 photographic portraits of British artists.

    Check it out here.

  • State of the Art: Remembering Life Photographer Allan Grant

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    :

    One of the great photographers from Life magazine’s golden age, Allan Grant, died on February 1 at his home in Brentwood, California. He was 88 years old.

    Other Life photographers, such as Alfred Eisenstaedt and Margaret Bourke-White, were better known than Grant. But few covered as wide a variety of stories. Among his most enduring images are his portraits of

    Hollywood beauties. He famously shot Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly together backstage at the 1955 Academy Awards and made the last photos of Marilyn Monroe at her Brentwood home in 1962. One of best known images was a Life cover shot of actress Shirley MacClaine mugging for the camera with her daughter Sachi.

    Check it out here.

  • Why We Needed Henry Froehlich – – PopPhotoJanuary 2008

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    The photographic realm has just lost two giants with the deaths of Popular Photography’s Burt Keppler and, now, of Henry Froehlich, former head of medium-format mainstay Mamiya America. Though less visible than Burt to readers of photography magazines, Henry was just as influential in the photo industry, and in many of the same ways. Influence aside, he was a lovely, kindhearted man.

    A refugee from Nazi Germany, Henry did much to promote Japanese cameras in the U.S. after World War II, distributing the Konica line. Eventually he merged that business with Berkey Photo, a key distributor that had previously absorbed the German photo importing business of Paul Klingenstein, a fellow refugee and future Mamiya partner. Henry went on to create a film-to-video conversion business with Jan Lederman, now head of the MAC Group, and the three men later founded the highly successful Mamiya America.

    In his role at Mamiya, Henry was a hero and friend to some of our best photographers, including Annie Leibovitz and Douglas Kirkland. If they or other Mamiya RZ or RB users had any job-threatening trouble with their equipment, Henry would hop to it, getting stuff fixed in a flash and often loaning out replacement gear in the interim. It seemed beyond the call of corporate duty, but reflected Henry’s deep affection for photography and photographers. Yet he was a consummate businessman, famous for driving a hard bargain — with absolute pleasantness.

    Check it out here.

  • Bernie Boston, 74; Took Iconic 1967 Photograph – washingtonpost.com

    Check it out:

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    Bernie Boston, 74; Took Iconic 1967 Photograph – washingtonpost.com

    Mr. Boston, who retired from the Los Angeles Times, was working for the Washington Star on Oct. 21, 1967, when he took the image he called “Flower Power.”

    The man with the flowers was later identified as teenage actor George Harris. He was making a nonviolent gesture against the soldiers, who were braced for trouble as they faced 250,000 demonstrators protesting the Vietnam War.

    “I knew I had a good picture,” Mr. Boston later said. “Flower Power” became one of the most reprinted pictures of the past 40 years, appearing in government textbooks and television specials about the era.

    At the time, Mr. Boston could not persuade his editors of the shot’s potential impact. They buried it inside the front section. Adding to his frustration, his car tires were slashed at the protest, and a bouquet of flowers was placed under his windshield wipers.

    Here.

  • Remembering Ray

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    Remembering Ray: “Ray Farkas, one of the visionaries of video storytelling passed away recently.

    Known more as a producer than photographer, Ray’s legend is in large part due to the ‘Farkas look’ of his video stories. After placing wireless mics on his subjects, he made sure the camera was far away from them and often out of sight. Then he would present a question and withdraw so the subjects could have an ordinary conversation as they answered the question Ray offered. People just went about being themselves with the intimidating camera out of the way.

    The results were fascinating. It was some of the best storytelling on television. “

    (Via SportsShooter.)

  • Bernard "Bernie" Boston, 74, Retired Los Angeles Times Photojournalist, Was An Icon

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    Bernard “Bernie” Boston, 74, Retired Los Angeles Times Photojournalist, Was An Icon: “Retired Los Angeles Times photojournalist Bernard ‘Bernie’ Boston, 74, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and an NPPA Life Member, died today at his home in rural Virginia. Boston is probably best remembered for his iconic photograph of a young Vietnam war protester putting flowers in the barrels of soldiers’ guns during an anti-war march at the Pentagon in 1967.

    Boston died from Amyloidosis, a rare blood disease that he’s had since 2006, his long-time friend Ken Cooke told News Photographer magazine tonight. Boston retired from the Los Angeles Times in 1993, after many years of being their chief photographer in Washington. Before joining the Times, he was chief photographer for The Washington Star. Boston joined NPPA in 1965, and he covered every U.S. president from Harry S. Truman to William Jefferson Clinton. Boston was also a member of the Senate Press Photographers Gallery and a member of the White House Press Corps.

    ‘He was an icon, and Bernie was once described as the darling of the White House News Photographers Association,’ Cooke said tonight. Boston had served as WHNPA’s president four times and was a WHNPA Life Member, Cooke said, and the photographer was recently honored as a distinguished alumnae of the Rochester Institute of Technology when the school produced a retrospective of Boston’s career as a book, Bernie Boston, American Photojournalist.”

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

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    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 ‘citizen journalist’ turned martyr. The construction company manager was driving his car when he witnessed an ugly scene: a team of about 50 city inspectors beating villagers who tried to block trucks from unloading trash near their homes.

    Wei took out his cell phone and began taking pictures. The city inspectors saw Wei and then attacked him in a beating that lasted five minutes. By the time it was over, the 41-year-old Wei was slumped unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital but was dead on arrival.”

  • 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 to the U.S. military. Russian news organizations identified Chebotayev as one of the casualties on Monday.

    Links:

    Photoshelter’s In Memoriam Page for Chebotayev

    PDN Article

    Dmitry’s photographs on Photoshelter.Com

    Dmitry’s profile on Lightstalkers

  • 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 Guardian head of photography Roger Tooth, that I recommend watching.

    From Don McPhee’s obit, words I wish I had thought of in several occasions:

    Don was very much his own man, so I was always nervous of asking him to send any additional photographs from a shoot, down to me 200 miles away in London. “You have what I saw,” he would say, and what he saw was just right.

    Also, a post on Guardian photographer Dan Chung’s blog about McPhee.

    Gone but not forgotten.

    This post first appeared here.

  • 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 is an ideal city, intellectually stimulating and naturally beautiful. The oceans and forests are close enough to refresh the spirit; the architecture is always exciting.”

    Here.

  • 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 them — have created an atmosphere of impunity and violence that extends beyond those whose writings or broadcasts anger those in government or business. That was also lamented here, inside an airy white-stone hall at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.

    Anna Politkovskaya’s killing was the third mob-style assassination of prominence in the last month alone. Andrei Kozlov, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, who led efforts to clean up the dirty money of the country’s banking system, was killed as he left a soccer game on Sept. 13. Less than two weeks later, Enver Ziganshin, the chief engineer of Kovytka, a potentially lucrative gas field in Siberia at the center of a dispute with the government, was shot in the back and head at his bathhouse in the countryside.

    Here.

  • 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,” he said. “No other versions are assumed.”

    The former Soviet president, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, a shareholder of the newspaper where Ms. Politkovskaya worked, called her killing “a savage crime.”

    “It is a blow to the entire democratic, independent press,” Mr. Gorbachev told the Interfax news agency. “It is a grave crime against the country, against all of us.”

    Here.

  • 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 unnamed police sources.

    The award-winning journalist fell seriously ill with food poisoning in 2004, which some suspected was an attempt on her life.

    Here.

  • 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 photograph illness. “One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and turn on. It’s on all the time.” In the middle of her Caesarean in 2001 she reached up with a camera to try to shoot the birth of her daughter, Sarah, over the curtain suspended across her midriff. “They’re all totally out of focus and terrible,” she laughed.

    She photographed her father after his death in 2005. He was 91, had lung cancer and had driven a car until a week before. He died at home in bed, with hospice care, in his wife’s arms. The family kept his body in the bedroom all day, as children and, later, a rabbi arrived. Ms. Leibovitz photographed him there, his head on a flowered pillowcase, in pajamas with dark piping. “You find yourself reverting to what you know,” she said. “It’s almost like a protection of some kind. You go back into yourself. You don’t really know quite what you’re doing. I didn’t really analyze it. I felt driven to do it.”
    She said, “My father was so beautiful lying there.”

    Here.