By José Manuel Serrano Esparza
During his long service as
an AP foreign photojournalist and picture editor in the Vietnam War between
1962 and 1974, Horst Faas (1933-2012) became one of the best war photographers
ever and mentor of a number of other top-notch war photographers like Peter
Arnett, Huynh Thanh My, Nick Ut, Malcolm Browne, Eddie Adams, Hugh van Es, Dang
van Phuoc, Henri Huet, Richard Pyle, Steve Stibbens, George Esper, Art
Greenspot, Robert Ohman, Ghislain Bellorget, Neal Ulevich, Roger King, Ollie Noonan Jr, Dick Blystone and others, making up the mythical AP Saigon Bureau, which provided a
very high percentage of the most famous images of the conflict to a number of
newspapers and magazines all over the world.
Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes
of Photography (1965 and 1972), the Robert Capa Gold Medal (1997) and the Dr.
Erich Salomon Prize (2005),
Horst Faas has been one of
the greatest and most influential war photographers in history, particularly
excelling during his coverage of the Vietnam War, creating a raft of iconic pictures
faithfully depicting what war really was and oozing impact, in addition to
proving once and again a huge flair for this photographic genre, using Leica M
cameras and highly luminous 35 mm lenses as main photographic tools.
THE BEGINNING OF A PRODIGIOUS
CAREER
Horst Faas´s photographic
baptism took place in 1951, when being only eighteen years old he took a job as
a darkroom assistant for Keystone Photo Agency in Munich, where he discovered
his photojournalistic vocation on developing a lot of black and white films
exposed by different photographers, as well as making prints.
The feeling on beholding
black and white images appearing on photographic paper inside the darkroom was
something magical for him, pervading his soul, and he started to develop an
exceptional memory and thoroughness with pictures, along wit a tremendous
organization and archival ability with original negatives and contact sheets,
something that which would be one of his hallmarks throughout his professional
career.
Three years later, he
became a full-fledged photojournalist for Keystone Press, covering the Vietnam
Peace Talks in Geneva in 1954 and making some more assignments in 1955, until
in 1956 he was hired by AP, creating his first reportages as a war photographer
between 1960 and mid 1962, making photographs of the Civil War in Congo and the
Algerian War of Independence.
A BOUNDLESS COURAGE
Horst Faas was an utterly
fearless war photographer on the battlefield and steadily risked his life to
get good pictures, most times from a very near distance, so his bravery was
legendary among his professional colleagues.
Besides, he always had an
amazing ability to anticipate where the action would be.
And imbued with a pretty
unselfish personality, the German photographer was highly skillful discovering,
recruiting and supporting new photojournalists gifted for war photography,
subsequently putting them under his tutelage.
His courage in the midst
of the most dangerous contexts was truly mind-boggling and he never lost his
nerve.
Impressive photograph in
which Horst Faas captures a group of American soldiers trying to take cover as
fast as possible, just after the same CH-46 Sea Knight U.S helicopter shown in
the previous picture has crashed on the ground on July 15, 1966.
Incredibly, the bulky but
very fast and agile German photographer has been able to run some hundred
meters following the trajectory in the air of the shot helicopter during the
previous seconds until reaching a spot very near a hill area where it has
crashed and exploded killing one crewman and twelve marines, while three
crewmen have managed to save their lives.
Horst Faas doesn´t
hesitate to greatly risk his life, putting one knee on the ground to get the
picture from a very low angle and achieve maximum feasible impact, sense of
motion and collective convulsion. The timing accuracy and sense of composition
of this image are staggering.
The middle area of the
picture is the most meaningful and important one, proving for the nth time
Horst´s Faas huge talent, with the two G.I running in opposite directions (the
nearest one to the camera adjusting his helmet to his head and his right leg
and foot in motion, while the other one is about to begin his run with his left
foot on the ground and the right one in motion).
A very powerful triangle
is made up by these two soldiers, hugely enhanced by the pronounced diagonal
towards the left of the image described by the U.S soldier holding his rifle
with his left hand crossed on his chest towards the right of the picture.
The heavy smoke visible in
the background adds drama to the image, reinforced by the American soldier
appearing in the distance (naked from waist upwards) between the two main
characters of the photograph, framed by other soldiers around them, who run in
every direction looking for shelter.
In addition, the German
genius has managed to strengthen the tension of the image with a masterful
pressing of the shutter release button of his Leica M2 just at the moment in
which it seems that the trajectories of the soldier adjusting his helmet with
his right hand and the one visible on the left of the image with both arms
stretched, supporting his body weight on his left foot and with his right leg
and foot in motion, will inevitably collide in the lowest middle border of the
image.
Furthermore, Horst Faas
has shown an stunning experience and knowledge of the distance from which he
must get the picture, because if he would have approached more with his camera
to the epicenter of the action, he would have become a physical hindrance for
the soldiers in such a chaotic context like this, so he shoots with his Leica
M2 coupled to a Summicron-M 35 mm f/2 1st version from a very near distance,
but leaving a wise chosen space between him and the G.Is, masterfully capturing
the atmosphere of the moment with the fastest autofocus in existence then and
nowadays : shooting with the camera previously set for use with hyperfocal
technique, having probably selected f/8 diaphragm, in order to get extensive
depth of field and enough sharpness in the whole image, from foreground to
background, to such a degree that even the pieces of earth flying in the air as
a consequence of the very near impact of the shell are visible slightly on the
left of the middle area of the image.
Horst Faas made always a
point of getting the best possible images of the Vietnam War, with a
fundamental keynote : to turn Associated Press into the reference-class news
agency of the conflict in terms of defining pictures.
And he was successful,
being willing to pay a high price for it if necessary.
And after being wounded by
a rocket grenade during fighting near Bu Dop (Province of Binh Phuoc) in 1967,
he was about to lose both legs.
Horst Faas was also an
exceedingly talented planner of assignments both for him and other
photographers, able to get scoops by dint of perseverence, uncommon intuition
and sense of anticipation.
The upshot of it is that Horst Faas had a got a huge talent both generating defining images and as a picture editor, choosing at top speed the best pictures made by other war photographers and transmitting them by wire before the deadlines, in addition to being a great writer able to befittingly explain with words the images he saw through the lens of his camera.
.
ECLOSION OF HIS
INTERNATIONAL FAME DURING THE VIETNAM WAR
In late 1962, Horst Faas
was sent by Associated Press to Saigon (South Vietnam) as a war photographer
and picture editor.
To begin with, this was an
uncommon double mission (both roles and professions were clearly differentiated
at the time), conspicuously showing the boundless confidence AP had on the
German photographer and his already proved tremendous visual culture,
experience and insight with images, bolstered with a stunning flair for
selecting the most meaningful pictures.
Right off the bat, Horst
Faas, named to practical effects Chief of Operations of AP in South East Asia,
managed to spawn what would be internationally known as " Horst´s Army
", made up by the aforementioned well-known war photographers, trained and
mentored by him, who would supply a lot of defining images of the Vietnam War
to the best illustrated newspapers and magazines in the world during sixties
and first half of seventies, complementing the extraordinary pictures made by
Horst Faas himself.
Moreover, Horst Faas was
(along with Larry Burrows) a pioneer in the use of Leica M2 camera in Vietnam,
because until his arrival, vast majority of AP photographers had used big 4 x 5
" (10 x 12 cm) large format Speed Graphic cameras.
But he went to Vietnam
taking with him the Leica M2 cameras and lenses that he had been using since
1959 in Congo and Algeria.
And it paid off for him.
Horst Faas knew that the
image quality delivered by the large format Speed Graphic cameras was
impressive and it enabled to do very big enlargements and excellent selective
reframings.
But they were too big,
heavy and cumbersome to shoot handheld for the kind of photography he wanted to
do, with both eyes open, enjoying a totally unfettered freedom and great speed
of movements, enabling him to anticipate to action and above all to
unobtrusively approach as much as possible to the thick of combats.
And the best photographic
tool to attain this was a 24 x 36 mm format Leica M rangefinder camera, because
of the very tiny size and light weight of both body and lenses, the superb
optomechanical quality of its objectives, the lack of a swivelling mirror
making possible to shoot handheld at very low shutter speeds without
trepidation and a breathtaking shutter lag of only 12ms (Leica M2) between the
instant in which the photographer presses the shutter release button of the
camera and the exposure.
Moreover, the images
created by Horst Faas during the Vietnam War feature the unique and very nice
image aesthetics delivered by non aspherical Leica M lenses designed by Walter
Mandler at the Leitz Factory in Midland, Ontario (Canada), particularly the 8
elements in 6 groups Summicron-M 35 mm f/2 SAWOM 11308 First Version
(1958-1969) in chrome mount and 12504 lens shade, which was the one most widely
used by the German war photographer throughout this conflict.
On the other hand, Horst
Faas was a very strong man, full of stamina, featuring an outstanding
resistance to fatigue, and incredibly agile for his big size and weight, who
developed a highly protective attitude towards the photographers with whom he
worked in Vietnam, always helping them as much as possible, guiding their
careers, becoming a source of inspiration, and creating unforgettable moments
and anecdotes with his very special sense of humour.
A GREAT HUMAN BEING WITH
VERY DEEP KNOWLEDGE OF ASIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
Aside from his immense
talent, courage, speed of movements, sense of anticipation, unwavering
commitment in everything he did, incredible accuracy on pressing the shutter
release button of his camereas to capture the most defining instants,
perseverance, abiding love for his trade, leadership and many more things, one
of the key factors that turned Horst Faas into one of the foremost war
photographers on earth during his coverage of the Vietnam War was undoubtedly
his deep fascination for Asia, its different countries, ancient cultures and
history, to such an extent that he became an expert on it.
Faas was always mesmerized
by the unique landscapes of countries like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, China,
Burma, etc.
And whenever it was
possible, he prepared in advance each photographic mission in Vietnam,
paintakingly studying maps, books and all kind of things that could help him to
glean as much information as possible about the areas where he would get
pictures,
many of them depicting the
civil population suffering the war.
Another of his top
priorities was always to prevent the AP photographers (both foreign and
Vietnamese) he had trained and encouraged from taking too many risks during the
assignments, frequently choosing to go alone during the most dangerous
missions, so minimizing as much as he could the probability of death of other
not so experienced colleagues.
That was the reason for
which when he hired a 15 years old Nick Ut as a photographer for AP on January
1, 1966, he ordered him not to go with his cameras to any war zone, so Huynh
Thanh My´s seven brother spent the next two years working inside the AP bureau
darkroom until 1968, when he began to get pictures of combats.
As a matter of fact, from
his very arrival at Vietnam in 1962 until 1974, Horst Faas became a kind of
father for the rest of war photographers and correspondents in the AP Bureau of
Saigon, which gained huge world celebrity on winning nothing more than five
Pulitzer Prizes of Journalism throughout those twelve years :
- Horst Faas (1965, for
his combat photography of the War in South Vietnam in 1964).
- Peter Arnett (1966, for
his coverage of the War in Vietnam).
- Eddie Adams (1969, for
his photograph " Saigon Execution " ).
- Horst Faas and Michel
Laurent (1972, for their picture series " Death in Dacca " ).
- Nick Ut (1973, for his
picture " Vietnamese Girl Running After Being Burnt with Napalm in the
Village of Trang Bang " ).
Horst Faas was the
mastermind behind everything, not only for his signature photography of the
Vietnam War, but particularly as a brilliant editor and manager of AP´s
far-flung international photo network, always doing his best to promote and
spread the pictures made by other AP photographers, including a cadre of young
South Vietnamese men coached by him to take photographs, providing them with
cameras, b & w films and daily assignments.
He was a Renaissance Man
with vast culture, able to speak for many hours on a wide range of topics, and
had great interest for history and art, to such an extent that he would turn
into a great collector of Asian antiquities.
All of his colleague war
photographers loved him, and the Vietnam conflict forged lifelong bonds amongst
them, greatly built on the new standards Horst Faas set for future generations
of professionals embracing this photographic genre and also steadfastly
searching for the most telling images.
Horst Faas never lost his
passion for great stories, took a lot of pride for being an AP newsman and made
all the photographers and journalists around him better.
THE FINAL YEARS OF A MAN
WITH A LION´S HEART
After Vietnam War, Horst
Faas moved in 1976 to London as AP´s senior photo editor for Europe, retiring
in 2004.
In 1997, Random House published the book " Requiem : By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina ", written by Horst Faas and Tim Page (a war photographer of United Press International), where they make a laudable selection of pictures made by more than eighty photographers and journalists from ten different nationalities killed during the Wars in Vietnam between forties and seventies, and it turned since early 2000 into a travelling photographic exhibition all over the world under the custody of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.
In 1998, Horst Faas and
Richard Pyle went to Laos along with a Hawaii based Pentagon unit specialized in searching American
soldiers missing in action in Indochina, managed to find the place where
photographers Larry Burrows (Life magazine), Henry Huet (Associated Press),
(Ken Potter United Press International) and Keishaburo Shimamoto (Newsweek)
were killed on February 10, 1971 when the South Vietnamese helicopter in which
they were flying over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, covering the Operation
Lamson 719, was shot down by a North Vietnamese 37 mm antiaircraft gun and
exploded in mid air.
And with the help of local
workers, they could also recover camera parts, film and other items, together with
traces of organic material of the four photographers.
But Horst Faas and Richard
Pyle needed to pay homage to their lost friends,
and five years later, in
2003, both of them were the authors of the book " Lost Over Laos : A True
Story of Tragedy, Mystery and Friendship ", published by Da Capo Press,
whose presentation at the Overseas Press Club in 40 W. 45th Street in New York
on January 4, 2003 was an unforgettable and very touching event, conducted by
Larry Martz, former President, as well as having the attendance of Horst Faas
and Richard Pyle.
One year
later, on May 4, 2005, shortly after the celebration event of the 30th
Anniversary of the end of Vietnam War with photojournalists who covered it,
when they had just held a meeting on the rooftrop of Rex Hotel in Saigon, Horst
Faas was stricken by a
blood clot on his spinal column, being evacuated by plane to a hospital in
Thailand, and after some days, he was taken in a flight of Thai International
to Munich, where he was hospitalized again at the Klinik Murnau in the
outskirts of the Bavarian capital.
From then to
his death in 2012, Horst Faas lost all his sensitiveness under the waist, so he
couldn´t walk and had to use a wheel chair at every moment, as was confirmed by
his great friend Marianne Fulton (Chief Curator of the George Eastman House
International Museum of Photography and Film between 1975 and 2002, as well as
worldwide lecturer and organizer of more than 80 exhibitions with pictures made
by world-class photographers) who visited him in the Unfallklinik Murnau.
But he plucked up courage
and kept on as active as possible, organizing a lot of worldwide meeting of
photojournalists, reunions of the war time Saigon Press Corps, international
photojournalism symposiums, exhibitions of his work in different countries,
etc.
Something exceedingly
praiseworthy, because Horst Faas spent the seven years of his life virtually
disabled, on a wheel chair and above all suffering from continuous and very
intense pains that the legendary old lion tried to conceal before everybody.
On April 3 and 4 of 2008,
the scant remains of Larry Burrows, Henry Huet, Kent Potter and Keishaburo
Shimamoto were honoured, with eulogies and speeches by Richard Pyle, Horst
Faas, Russell Burrows (Larry Burrow´s son), Peter Pritchard (Newseum President)
and Tom Curley (AP President) and buried at the Newseum in Washington, D.C,
along with seven South Vietnamese soldiers who went also inside the helicopter
when it was shot down.
That same year appeared a new book :" Horst Faas, 50 Years of Photojournalism ", published by Editions du Chêne, profusely illustrated and written by Horst Faas and Helene Gedouin, a remarkable work that was selected by Visa Por L´Image Perpignan.
In a last strenuous effort
to promote photojournalism and encourage new young war photographers, Horst
Faas made two arduous trips to United States in 2006 and 2008, giving some very
interesting lectures, and also helped to the development of the Degree Program
in Photojournalism of the University of Magdeburg-Stendal, founded in 2008.
In late 2008, his health
deteriorated even more and he had to be hospitalized again because of skin
problems, but he had to also undergo gastric surgery.
The paralysis had remained
since 2005, when an Australian doctor at the Bumrungrad hospital in Bangkok
(Thailand) discovered the blood clot in his spinal column and made the first
surgery to drain it.
Increasingly ailing and
weak, Horst barely made further public appearances from 2010, and died on May
10, 2012 in a hospital of Munich.
Horst Faas, a giant in the
History of Photography. His pictures defined the Vietnam War, in the same way
as the images made in that conflict by other great photographers of Associated
Press taught by him and whose images he very wisely edited. In addition, he
carved out new standards for covering wars, was the key photo editor of the
Vietnam War and became a role model for today´s front line war photographers
around the globe.
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ReplyDeleteclaireyaffa
Thank you for your excellent and well-researched article! Still, there are a few small corrections. Edie Lederer wasn't a photographer, she was a reporter at AP. She later headed the editorial office of AP at the UN. She lives actively and very lively in New York. George Esper and Richard Pyle were also editors, they subsequently headed the AP office in Saigon. George was the last bureau chief. He died in 2012. Richard died in 2017. It is also worth mentioning that Malcolm Browne was only able to take his famous picture of the “Burnig Monk” in 1963 because Horst Faas demanded that all reporters also have cameras with them. He used a small Petri viewfinder camera.
ReplyDeleteMichael Ebert, The Horst Faas estate