Eddie Adams

Introduction

Edward Thomas Adams was an American photographer and photojournalist known for celebrity and political images. He covered 13 wars.

He is best known for his photograph of Viet Cong prisoner Nguyn Van Lem's brutal encounter, for which he got the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1969.

Early Years

Edward Thomas Adams was commonly known as Eddie Adams. He was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, on June 12, 1933, and lived in Bogota, New Jersey.

Career

Early Career

Adams joined the United States Marine Corps as a combat photographer during the Korean War in 1951. One of his first duties after the war was to shoot the entire Demilitarized Zone from end to end. He worked on this for nearly a month.

Photograph that won the Pulitzer Prize

During the Vietnam War, he captured police commander General Nguyn Ngc Loan brutally killing Vietcong prisoner Nguyn Van Lem on the accusations of murdering South Vietnamese lieutenant-colonel Nguyen Tuan, his wife, six of his seven children, and his eighty-year-old mother. This happened on Saigon Street on February 1, 1968, during the early phases of the Tet Offensive.

Adams was awarded the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography along with a World Press Photo award for the photograph. David Perlmutter, a critic and writer, pointed out that "no film clip did as much damage as AP photojournalist Eddie Adams's 35 millimeters shot captured on a Saigon street."

According to The New York Times' Donald Winslow, Adams described the image as a "reflex photograph" and "was not sure of what he had photographed until the film was developed." In addition, Winslow wrote that Adams "wanted him to understand that 'Saigon Execution' was not his greatest picture, and therefore he did not want his last words to begin with, 'Eddie Adams, the photographer who is best known for his iconic Vietnam photograph "Saigon Execution."

Adams later came to regret the photograph's influence in the future. In 1998, Adams wrote in Time about Loan and his photograph:

Two persons were killed in that photograph, including the bullet victim and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The general murdered the Viet Cong, and he murdered the general with his camera. The world's most deadly weapons are still photos. People believe them, but visuals lie even when they are not modified. They only tell half the story. What it didn't say was, "What would you be doing if you were the general at that particular moment and place on that hot day, and you found the so-called bad guy after he shot away one, two, or three American individuals?" This picture seriously destroyed the general's life. The general never once called him responsible. The general stated that if he hadn't taken the photo, it would have been taken by someone else, but Adam has always felt terrible for the general and his family. When he learned of his death, he sent flowers and wrote, "I'm sorry." while having tears in his eyes."

Loan moved to the United States, and in 1978, he attempted unsuccessfully to have his permanent residency status (green card) dismissed. When the United States government tried to banish Loan based on the image, Adams defended him. He also personally apologized to Loan and his family for the irreversible harm done to his reputation while he was alive. When Loan died, Adams recalled him as a "hero" who had fought for a "fair cause."

He has been described as stating that " he would have preferred been known more for the collection of photograph shots of 48 Vietnamese refugees who additionally succeeded in making it to Thailand in a 30-foot boat, just to be towed back to the open seas by Thai marines." The photographs and accompanying reports supported at the time President Jimmy Carter's decision to provide shelter to almost 200,000 Vietnamese boat people. In 1977, he was awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal for this sequence of photographs in his photo essay "Boat of No Smiles," which was released by AP. Adams explained, "The photos did something good, and nobody got hurt."

Swann Galleries auctioned off an edition of Adams' photograph of Loan and Lém on October 22, 2009. It was printed in the 1980s as a present for Adams' child. It sold for $43,200.

Huan Nguyen was the only person to survive Lém's alleged murder of Tuan's family. He was just nine at the time, had been shot twice during the attack that killed his family, and waited with his dying mother for two hours. He was promoted to the position of rear admiral in the United States Navy in 2019, making him the highest-ranking Vietnamese-American leader in the US military.

Later

Adams founded The Eddie Adams Workshop, also known as the Barnstorm, in the year 1988, which is a photography workshop. The workshop celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2017.

Awards

Adams was the recipient of over 500 awards along with the Pulitzer Award, among which were the George Polk Award for News Photography in 1968, 1977, and 1978, 14 World Press Photo awards, and numerous honors awarded by the National Press Photographers Association, Sigma Delta Chi, Overseas Press Club, and plenty other organizations.

His Personal life

Adams married Ann Fedorchak first, with whom he had one son and two daughters, named Amy Marie Adams of New Jersey, Susan Ann Sinclair, and Edward Adams II of Atlanta. After the couple got divorced, he next married Alyssa Adkins in 1989, and they had one son together named August. He had four sisters, and his mother was Adelaide Adams, who was 100 years old when he died.

Death

Eddie Adams died on September 19, 2004, at the age of 71, in New York City. He was a journalist and photographer whose career was defined by a single frame - a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press shot.

Adams died at his Manhattan home from the symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, according to his helper, Jessica Stuart. He quickly lost his ability to speak after being diagnosed in May, yet he stayed active and worked till the end. Alyssa gave his photographed collections to the University of Texas in Austin in 2009 as a donation.