HORST FAAS: LEGENDARY WAR PHOTOGRAPHER
1933–2012
Cover photo: Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet-Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, near the Cambodian border, March 1965. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS This page: A South Vietnamese soldier uses the end of a dagger to beat a farmer for allegedly supplying government troops with inaccurate information about the movement of Viet Cong guerrillas in a village west of Saigon, Jan. 9, 1964. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
An unidentified U.S. Army personnel wears a hand lettered “War Is Hell� slogan on his helmet, June 18, 1965, during the Vietnam War. He was with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Battalion on defense duty at Phouc Vinh airstrip in South Vietnam. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
A father holds the body of his child as South Vietnamese Army Rangers look down from their armored vehicle March 19, 1964. The child was killed as government forces pursued guerrillas into a village near the Cambodian border. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
South Vietnamese civilians, among the few survivors of two days of heavy fighting, huddle together in the aftermath of an attack by government troops to retake the post at Dong Xoai, June 10, 1965. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
Two South Vietnamese children gaze at an American paratrooper holding an M79 grenade launcher as they cling to their mothers who huddle against a canal bank for protection from Viet Cong sniper fire in the Bao Trai area,, west of Saigon, Jan. 1, 1966. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon, Jan. 1, 1966. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
A bandaged Lt. Col. George Eyster of Florida is placed on a stretcher after being shot by a Viet Cong sniper at Trung Lap, South Vietnam, Jan. 16, 1966. Eyster, commander of the “Black Lions” battalion of the U.S. 1st Division, died 42 hours later in a Bien Hoa hospital to which he had been evacuated by helicopter. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
U.S. Marines scatter as a CH-46 helicopter burns, background, after is was shot down near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Vietnam, July 15, 1966. At least 13 Marines were reported killed in the crash, with three more badly burned. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
A South Vietnamese woman mourns over the body of her husband, found with 47 others in a mass grave near Hue, April, 1969. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
A cross is seen knocked out of position by mortar fire as troops of the U.S. 1st infantry division patrol a cemetery outside the perimeter at the Bu Dop special forces camp after a Viet-Cong attack, Dec. 4, 1967. The cemetery marks the furthest penetration by the enemy before they were driven off by American and South Vietnamese defenders. AP PHOTO / HORST FAAS
Horst Faas, with his Leica cameras around his neck, accompanies U.S. troops in War Zone C, a Vietnamese communist base area in the Tay Ninh province of Vietnam, 1967. AP PHOTO
HORST FAAS JOINED THE AP in Bonn, Germany, during Christmas of 1955 after spending several formative years at the Keystone Press Agency. After covering the vicious civil wars in Congo and Algeria, Faas was called to Saigon. He arrived on June 26, 1962, the same day as AP reporter Peter Arnett. Both were there to support Bureau Chief Malcolm Browne as U.S. involvement in Vietnam escalated. As AP’s chief photographer in Vietnam, Faas organized the AP Saigon bureau photo operation and ran it with administrative and editorial genius. He won the first of his two Pulitzers in 1965 for “daring and courageous combat photography” in Vietnam. Faas was also a mentor to the young photographers he hired and trained, among them Henri Huet, Huynh Thanh My, his brother, Nick Ut, Phuoc Van Dang, Hugh Van Es and, of course, Eddie Adams. It was Faas who transmitted Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Napalm Girl” photograph of severely burned Kim Phuc in 1972, moving it on the network despite some debate over its graphic content. As Faas later remarked, photos of the wounded had been taken for 10 years, but this photo showed something new. Almost from the beginning in Saigon, Faas teamed up with Peter Arnett. AP General Manager Wes Gallagher recognized the value of this double byline; he called the pair his “Green Bay Packers” (a reference, Faas admits, that was lost on him). One of their biggest stories, “Breaking Point,” told of the “combat refusal” of Army troops to move forward against a concealed enemy after five days of deadly fighting. “I am sorry sir, but my men refuse to go—we cannot move out,” the commander of Company A told his superior officer by radio as Faas listened nearby. Faas left Vietnam in July 1970 to begin a new assignment as chief photographer for Asia, based in Singapore. But a week later, Faas was back in Saigon, and he would return there periodically to the biggest story of his time. Later, as European photo editor based in London, his reach became global. Retiring in 2004, he was active in Vietnam media reunions, and it was after one of these, in Hanoi in 2005, that he suffered a spinal hemorrhage that left him a paraplegic for the next seven years. He died on May 10, 2012, in Munich, where he and his wife Ursula lived. Valerie S. Komor Director, AP Corporate Archives August 1, 2012
AP IMAGES 450 West 33rd Street New York, NY 10001 www.apimages.com