Eddie Adams | |
|---|---|
 Adams in 1985 | |
| Born | Edward Thomas Adams (1933-06-12)June 12, 1933 |
| Died | September 19, 2004(2004-09-19) (aged 71) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Photojournalist |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 4 |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography (1969) |
Edward Thomas Adams (June 12, 1933 – September 19, 2004) was an American photographer andphotojournalist noted for portraits of celebrities and politicians and for coverage of 13 wars. He is best known for his photograph of theexecution of Nguyễn Văn Lém, a Viet Cong prisoner of war, for which he won thePulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1969.[2][3][4] Adams was a longtime resident ofBogota, New Jersey.[5]
Edward Thomas Adams was born on June 12, 1933, inNew Kensington, Pennsylvania.[6]
Adams joined theUnited States Marine Corps in 1951, during theKorean War as acombat photographer.[7] One of his assignments was to photograph the entireDemilitarized Zone from end to end immediately following the war. This took him more than a month to complete.[citation needed]
It was while covering theVietnam War for theAssociated Press that he took his best-known photograph—that of police chief GeneralNguyễn Ngọc Loan, summarilyexecuting Nguyễn Văn Lém, aVietcong prisoner of war. This occurred on aSaigon street on February 1, 1968,[8][9] during the early part of theTet Offensive.
Adams won the 1969Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography[10] and aWorld Press Photo award[11] for the photograph. Writer and critic David D. Perlmutter states that "no film footage did as much damage asAP photographer Eddie Adams's35mm shot taken on a Saigon street ... When people talk or write about [the Tet Offensive] at least a sentence is devoted (often with an illustration) to the Eddie Adams picture".[12]
Anticipating the effect of Adams's photograph, an attempt at balance was sought by editors atThe New York Times. In his memoirs,John G. Morris recalls that assistant managing editorTheodore M. Bernstein "determined that the brutality manifested by America's ally be put into perspective, agreed to run the Adams picture large, but offset with a picture of a child slain by Vietcong, which conveniently came through from AP at about the same time."[13] Adams' picture, however, retained a more lasting infamy.Max Hastings, writing in 2018, accused Lém of murdering Colonel Nguyen Tuân, his wife, six children, and 80-year-old mother; he also wrote that American historianEd Moise "is convinced that the entire story of Lém murdering the Tuân family is a post-war invention" and that "The truth will never be known".[14]
InRegarding the Pain of Others (2003),Susan Sontag was disturbed by what she saw as Loan's staging of the execution in the street for journalists' photographs. She wrote that "he would not have carried out thesummary execution there had they [journalists] not been available to witness it" and positioned himself in profile view with the prisoner facing the cameras.[15] However, Donald Winslow ofThe New York Times quoted Adams as having described the image as a "reflex picture" and "wasn't certain of what he'd photographed until the film was developed". Furthermore, Winslow noted that Adams "wanted me to understand that 'Saigon Execution' was not his most important picture and that he did not want his obituary to begin, 'Eddie Adams, the photographer best known for his iconic Vietnam photograph "Saigon Execution"'".[10]
Adams would later lament the effect of the photo.[16] On Loan and his photograph, Adams wrote inTime in 1998:
Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. ... What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?". ... This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn't taken the picture, someone else would have, but I've felt bad for him and his family for a long time. ... I sent flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, "I'm sorry. There are tears in my eyes."[17]
Loan later relocated to the United States, and in 1978, there was an unsuccessful attempt to rescind hispermanent residence status (green card).[16] Adams advocated for Loan when the U.S. government sought to deport him based on the photograph, and apologized in person to Loan and his family for the irreparable damage it did to his honor while he was alive.[citation needed] When Loan died, Adams praised him as a "hero" of a "just cause".[18] On the television showWar Stories with Oliver North Adams referred to Loan as "a goddamned hero!"[19]
He once said, "I would have rather been known more for the series of photographs I shot of 48 Vietnamese refugees who managed to sail to Thailand in a 30-foot boat, only to be towed back to the open seas by Thai marines." The photographs, and accompanying reports, helped persuade then PresidentJimmy Carter to grant asylum to the nearly 200,000Vietnamese boat people.[20] He won theRobert Capa Gold Medal from theOverseas Press Club in 1977 for this series of photographs in his photo-essay, "Boat of No Smiles" (published by AP).[21] Adams remarked, "It did some good and nobody got hurt".[20][22]
On October 22, 2009,Swann Galleries auctioned a print of Adams' photo of Loan and Lém. Printed during the 1980s, it had been a gift to Adams's son. It sold for $43,200.[23]
The sole survivor of Lém's alleged killing of Tuan's family wasHuan Nguyen; aged nine at the time, he was shot twice during the attack that killed his family and stayed with his mother for two hours as she bled to death. In 2019, he became the highest ranking Vietnamese American officer in the U.S. military when he was promoted to the rank ofrear admiral in theUnited States Navy.[24][25]
Adams started a photojournalism workshop, The Eddie Adams Workshop (also known as the Barnstorm) in 1988.[26][27] It reached its thirtieth year in 2017.[28][29]
Along with the Pulitzer, Adams received more than 500 awards,[30] including theGeorge Polk Award for News Photography in 1968, 1977 and 1978,[31]World Press Photo awards on 14 occasions,[32] and numerous awards from theNational Press Photographers Association,Sigma Delta Chi,Overseas Press Club, and many other organizations.[33]
Adams was first married to Ann Fedorchak, with whom he had one son and two daughters. After the couple divorced, he marriedAlyssa Adkins in 1989; they had one son.[34]
On September 19, 2004, Adams died in New York City at age 71 from complications ofamyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).[6][7]
In 2009, his widow donated his photographic archive to theUniversity of Texas at Austin.[35][36][37]
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