Eddie Adams is a legend. He photographed 13 wars, six American Presidents and every major film star in the last 50 years. History would be changed through his lens. But one photograph would haunt him his entire life.
It took 1/500th of a second to get the shot...
... a lifetime to forget it.
It was in Vietnam in 1968 that Eddie shot that photograph -- the definitive war photograph of General Loan, the Saigon police chief shooting a Vietcong prisoner point-blank in the head. Eddie had captured the exact moment of impact. The photograph “Saigon Execution” won Eddie a Pulitzer Prize and was credited with changing public opinion and helping end the Vietnam War.
Eddie dismissed the photograph. “It was the wrong time of the day, the composition was terrible...” Instead he felt guilty about the General, an ally of the United States and the way the photograph had destroyed his life. “Two lives were destroyed that day,” Eddie would lament. “That’s not my job.”
After the war, in 1977, Eddie was eager to document the plight of the many thousands of refugees escaping Vietnam. Carrying some rice and a hundred dollars worth of gasoline, he jumped aboard a 30-foot boat overcrowded with people that were headed out to sea. It was a dangerous mission and he had no idea what his fate would be.
Eddie had been in refugee camps all over the world and he knew that children would always smile for his camera, but as he photographed these children out on the open seas in the blistering sun, the children refused to smile. Eddie called the series of photos “The Boat Of No Smiles” and presented them to Congress. The result: 250,000 Vietnamese refugees were allowed entry into the United States. Eddie says “It was the only good thing I did in my life, but I’m not a good guy.”
Journalists Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Morley Safer share their impressions of Eddie. Safer says “Eddie was not your typical sedate, thoughtful photographer. He was a grunt. He looked for trouble both on and off the job.”
“Eddie was the quintessential war photographer,” says Bill Eppridge. Yet, after 13 wars, Eddie hit a wall and began photographing celebrities, because “it didn’t take anything from him.”
At their first meeting, Eddie told CEO Walter Anderson that “he would never take a picture for Parade Magazine.” Eddie did shoot hundreds of their covers. One cover was of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a pool with a tiny yellow ducky, just before he became Governor of California.
Another was a shot of Clint Eastwood, not from the front or the side. Shot from the back, the photograph was so recognizably Clint Eastwood that it became the poster for the film Unforgiven.
Eddie Adams shot covers for “Life”, “Time” even for “Penthouse.” He photographed the greats of the world -- Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul, Bette Davis, Anwar Sadat and Louis Armstrong.
“Yet it was the ordinary people he seemed to identify with most -- the socially insignificant, the politically oppressed, the weak too often forgotten by the strong and healthy,” says friend Sam Garcia. His photographs would demand “How can you not fix this?”
Eddie’s work was never good enough to please Eddie though. “Maybe one day, if I take the perfect picture, I’ll be happy,” he’d say.
Eddie’s photographs lie in a disorganized mess of tattered boxes in the basement of his Manhattan Studio.
It was getting the shot Eddie cared about -- not profiting from it. “Hell, if someone asked me nicely I’d give it to them,” he’d say of one of his valuable photographs.
“He could have filled volumes of books with his photographs,” says photographer Douglas Kirkland. But Eddie had little interest in self-promotion.
In 2000 though he did travel across the world photographing human rights activists for a book with Kerry Kennedy (Robert Kennedy’s daughter). The book, called Speak Truth To Power was hugely successful and spawned gala events across the world. Movie stars read testimonies from the book, while Eddie’s photos were projected on giant screens. Eddie was typically unimpressed. His response “What kind of a fucking title is that? Speak Truth To Power?”
Eddie respected the many great photographers who have become his friends. “They really piss me off, because they’re so fucking good.” He wanted to help young photographers so he started a free workshop on his farm in upstate New York. He invited his famous friends -- Joe Rosenthal, Gordon Parks, and Mary Ellen Mark to come and teach the photography students for a weekend every fall. They all came, because Eddie inspired them to do so. Every year at the close of the workshop, in a heartfelt ceremony, photographers would lay sunflowers on the stone memorial Eddie had built to honor his fellow photographers killed in Vietnam. Every year, when their names were called, Eddie would cry.
Yes, that tough Eddie Adams, that unapproachable character in his signature black fedora and black clothes, and very colorful language. Eddie sometimes had an abrasive manner and didn’t tolerate fools gladly, but he had a huge heart.
Through the years, Eddie befriended the Vietnamese General, whose life he believed he’d ruined. On his last visit to General Loan in the small pizza shop he owned in Virginia, Eddie was distressed over the words he’d seen written on the walls of the bathroom there: “We know who you are, fucker!” “That really troubled me,” said Eddie. But Pulitzer Prize winning photographer David Kennerly had a different perspective: “You took a picture that changed history. What’s wrong with that?” ---© Official Site
IGN RSS Feeds