When I told John I was heading to Vietnam, he said to me… “do a story for me – call it Children of War…” I paused, then bagan to ask, “John, what do you want me to do… ?” and before I could finish the sentence, he said “No, no! You tell ME the Story. YOU’re the journalist, your pictures should show ME the story.” Over the decades since, I have been immensely glad for that teaching moment.
Mr. Faas was a brilliant planner, able to score journalistic scoops by anticipating “not just what happens next, but what happens after that,” as one colleague put it.
As chief of photo operations for The Associated Press in Saigon for a decade beginning in 1962, Horst Faas didn’t just cover the fighting — he also recruited and trained new talent from among foreign and Vietnamese freelancers.
This past Thursday marked the passing of Horst Faas. Probably as much as about anyone since Capa, he was someone whose mere mention of a name — either first OR last, was enough to conjure up that big personality and , yes, talent, that he was
Horst Faas, a prize-winning combat photographer who carved out new standards for covering war with a camera and became one of the world’s legendary photojournalists in nearly half a century with The Associated Press, died Thursday. He was 79
The unsettling images from civil rights battlegrounds, followed closely by the disturbing images from Vietnam battlefields by Horst Faas, Eddie Adams, Nick Ut and others, created a golden era for photojournalism.
Today, everyone with a cellphone is a photographer/videographer and streaming video has become a national obsession. But has the proliferation of images devalued photojournalism and dulled its influence?
