Horst Faas

Horst Faas 

Born April 28, 1933- Berlin Germany 

Died May 10, 210- Munich Germany

(1)-Horst Faas, German photojournalist, captured the fear, suffering, and exhaustion of war in images taken for the Associated Press (AP) during the Vietnam War and other international conflicts. After Faas grew up in World War II Germany, he got a job in 1951 at the Keystone photo agency in Munich. He joined the AP in 1956 and photographed conflicts in Algeria and central Africa before being assigned to Vietnam in 1962. Mr. Faas became the chief photographer. This allowed Mr. Haas was also a key figure in getting Eddie Adam's "Execution heard Around the World." (2)-The risks taken by Faas to get his pictures were enormous, and on at least one occasion he was fortunate to survive. On December 6 1967 he was wounded in the legs by a rocket-propelled grenade at Bu Dop, in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Faas was a shrewd planner, and could secure journalistic scoops by anticipating “not just what happens next but what happens after that”, That is some good advice to think about for any upcoming photographer.  In later life Faas set up reunions for the wartime Saigon press corps, and ran international photojournalism symposiums. At one such event in Hanoi in 2005, he became sick and was flown to a hospital in Germany, where doctors diagnosed a spinal hemorrhage and told him he was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. With the British freelance photographer, Tim Page, Faas was co-editor of Requiem 1997, a book about photographers killed on both sides of the Vietnam War. Faas also co-wrote Lost Over Laos 2003, the story of four photographers shot down in Laos in 1971 and the search for the crash site 27 years later.

Horst Faas is survived by his wife, Ursula, and their daughter.

(1) www.britannica.com/biography/Horst-Faas

(2) www.telegraph.co.uk