One of the Best War Photojournalists of Vietnam and Beyond

Never published before, Eddie Adams' family have released a book of his Vietnam Photo's and there's a showing in the New York Umbrage Gallery of same.

The Vietnam War, Through Eddie Adams' Lens

All Things Considered, March 24, 2009 · The late photographer Eddie Adams took pictures of hundreds of celebrities and politicians — everyone from Fidel Castro to Mother Teresa to Arnold Schwarzenegger (whom he captured in a bathtub with a rubber duck) — but some of his most searing portraits come from his work during the Vietnam War.

“No war was ever photographed the way Vietnam was, and no war will ever be photographed again the way Vietnam was photographed ... Photographers had incredible access, which you don't get anymore.”
Hal Buell, former AP photo editor

These are just a very few shots from Vietnam that NPR has in a short photo slideshow on the site.

Disclaimer: This story and accompanying slideshow contain graphic depictions of war.

Adams died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 2004. His war photographs were never published in a book during his lifetime — people who knew him say the photographer had an intense desire to be perfect, so book projects were always delayed. Now, four-and-a-half years after his death, Eddie Adams: Vietnam presents a collection of his photographs from the war.

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I did a search to find a bit more information and came up with the following:

An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story The Documentary

The Trailer in Quicktime

Eddie Adams carried 'An Unlikely Weapon'

I first saw it in winter 1968, shortly after New Year's Day. As I recall, it was high on Page 1 of the Stars and Stripes newspaper, and I thought, "Just another horrific photo of the Vietnam War."

I was a smart-alecky senior at Augsburg American High School in Augsburg, Germany, and I shrugged off the Associated Press photo spread across the front pages of virtually all the world's major newspapers that January morning. Winning my next basketball game concerned me more than man's inhumanity to man or the U.S. military's unease after the Tet Offensive.

Later, watching a Woody Allen movie, "Stardust Memories" (1980), the famous actor-director included a scene in a New York City apartment -- and there this particularly heart-stopping photo was again, blown up billboard-size and papering the posh, white-walled living room of Allen's character. I laughed for a number of reasons, but one was "Street Execution of a Vietcong Prisoner," I learned the iconic photo was later called, at some level probably helped to end the Vietnam War and was being used to seriocomic effect in a film about the nature of fame and success. A classic piece of wartime photojournalism, one of the best-known images from the Vietnam War, it helped to persuade Americans about the futility of the United States' overlong involvement in the worn-down, war-ravaged Southeast Asian
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Eddie Adams - Journalist Wars Home

The Vietcong Execution


Scared to Death in Vietnam


If in New York City you might want to take a visit to the Gallery to view his photo's

War Story, March 24, 2009

The other night, a group of hard-core journalist types gathered at the Umbrage gallery, in DUMBO, for an exhibition of black-and-white photographs by the late Eddie Adams. The centerpiece was Adams’s 1968 Pulitzer Prizewinning photograph, taken for the Associated Press, of Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the police chief of South Vietnam, firing a bullet into the head of a Vietcong suspect. The exhibit, which coincides with the release of “Eddie Adams: Vietnam,” a book put together by Adams’s widow, Alyssa, features much work that has never been seen, printed from a cache of negatives that Adams’s first wife, Ann, discovered inside some plastic garbage bags in her garage. (A documentary about Adams, “An Unlikely Weapon,” comes out in New York in April.) Hal Buell, a former A.P. editor who knew Adams “for a hundred years,” and who wrote the text for the book, said it seemed fitting that the photographer’s work had been misplaced: “That’s a disease of daily picture journalism. We’re so busy doing today that sometimes history gets shunted aside and ends up in a bag somewhere.” >>>>>more

Eddie Adams: Vietnam

Description

"After the whole history of Vietnam is written, it'll just be our photos." -Eddie Adams to Nick Ut (author of the 1973 Pulitzer Prizewinning photo of the napalmed girl running)

The first book by one of the world's legendary photojournalists, "Eddie Adams: Vietnam" is a long-awaited landmark. Adams' 1968 Pulitzer Prizewinning photograph cemented his reputation in the public eye and stands forever as an icon for the brutality of our last century: the image of Nguyen Ngoc Loan, police chief of Saigon, firing a bullet at the head of a Vietcong prisoner. Adams' image fueled antiwar sentiment that ultimately changed the course of history.

Adams' life in the headlines took him to the remotest corners of this troubled, beautiful planet compiling a historic record of the days of our lives. His forty-five-year career covered thirteen wars and amassed some five hundred photojournalism awards. He was a man to whom Clint Eastwood said, "Good shot;" Fidel Castro said, "Let's go duck hunting;" and the Pope said, "You've got three minutes." This is the man behind the Pulitzer Prizewinning picture that changed the world in 1968.

Through astonishing never-before-seen pictures, articles written by Adams, pages from journals, and other artifacts, one great journalist's experience of the war is told in gripping detail.

Edited by Alyssa Adams, with an essay by AP Bureau Chief Hal Buell, and contributions by Peter Arnett, Tom Brokaw, David Halberstam, George Esper, David Kennerly, Dirck Halstead, Tom Curley, Kerry Kennedy, and more, this is a classic of modern history and photography.