York: 1952;Artificial Light Photography. New York:
1956.
Polaroid Land Photography. Boston: 1979.
The Camera. Boston: 1980.
Further Reading
Alinder, James.Ansel Adams: 50 Years of Portraits. Car-
mel, CA: 1979.
Doty, Robert, ed.Photography in America. New York and
London: 1974.
Gray, Andrea.Ansel Adams: An American Place. Tucson,
AZ: 1984.
Newhall, Nancy.The Eloquent Light. San Francisco: 1963.
Szarkowski, John.Looking at Photographs. New York:
1973.EDDIE ADAMS
American
A prolific photojournalist, the self-taught Eddie
Adams has photographed over 13 wars in the course
of a career that has spanned more than 40 years.
Although it is specifically these war-related photo-
graphs that have earned him international renown
as well as hundreds of awards including a 1969
Pulitzer Prize, Adams’s oeuvre also includes por-
traits of numerous American presidents, foreign
leaders of state including Pope John Paul II and
Fidel Castro, celebrities such as Louis Armstrong
and Clint Eastwood, and anonymous figures aro-
und the world. Adams’s photos have regularly
appeared in such newspapers and magazines as
Time,Newsweek,Life,Paris Match,Vogue,Vanity
Fair, The New York Times, andStern, and he
has also done commercial, fashion, and advertis-
ing photography for numerous corporate and pri-
vate clients.
Adams is probably best-known through his Pu-
litzer Prize winning photograph he took in Febru-
ary 1968, while stationed in Saigon as a member of
the Associated Press. The image depicts the Amer-
ican-educated and trained Brig. General Nguyen
Ngoc Loan (then South Vietnam’s National Chief
of Police) in the act of executing a Viet Cong pri-
soner who had just been apprehended for murder-
ing several of Nguyen Ngog Loan’s men. Graphic
and violent, this photograph was published on the
front page of theNew York Timesand, along with
the NBC film of the same event, is credited with
having provoked the civilian outrage that lead to
massive demonstrations against the Vietnam War
and quite possibly to President Johnson’s decision
not to seek reelection. Since then, the image (along
with Nick Ut’s photograph of a naked girl fleeing
her napalmed village) has been reproduced so fre-
quently that it has come to serve as synecdoche for
the entire Vietnam War, and stands as Adams’s
most significant photograph.
The image of the Viet Cong prisoner’s execution
has also played an important role in the decades-
long debate regarding the risks and values of war
photography. Without images like this one, some
have argued, the horrors of war would remain
invisible to the public far away from the fighting
and might therefore be taken less seriously. Yet
others contest that contemporary war depends on
the very possibility of photographic exposure and
that egregious acts of violence are committed as a
result of this publicity. For instance, it has been
argued that Nguyen Ngoc Loan was only inter-
ested in publicly assassinating the Viet Cong pris-
oner because there were AP press corps there to
capture the image. For him, the photographic evi-
dence of the execution was meant to teach the Viet
Cong what would happen to their forces if caught.
In this sense, the image represents a staged event as
much as it represents a document of truth, thereby
putting into question the unmitigated truth-value
of photography.
Adams is also well known for his photographic
essay of South Vietnamese refugees entitledThe
Boat of No Smiles. It is often suggested that Con-
gress circulated copies of this series of touching
photographs in order to raise support for an amen-
dment to current immigration law that wouldADAMS, ANSEL