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(Zurich) 26 Juni 1999.LARRY BURROWS
British
Shot by shot, story by story, Larry Burrows devel-
oped an enduring vision of the war in Vietnam,
where he photographed for nine years from 1962
until his presumed death under fire in a helicopter
on the Vietnam-Laos border in 1971. In the process,
Burrows developed his reputation as one of the
preeminent photojournalists of the twentieth cen-
tury. Working forLifemagazine, Burrows created
remarkable photo essays in both black-and-white
and color that chronicle the escalating involvement
of the United States in Vietnam, from advisers to
full combatants after 1965, and the emotional and
physical toll of the war on Vietnamese and Amer-
icans alike. Besides the powerful legacy of his Viet-
nam photographs, Burrows photographed a range
of other subjects across several continents in his 25-
year career.
Born Henry Leslie Burrows in London in 1926 to
working class parents (his father was a truck driver
for the railroad, his mother was a housewife), Bur-
rows never attended college. He honed his craft
through a lengthy apprenticeship, first as a dark-
room assistant at Keystone Photographic Agency
in London in 1941, then getting a job in 1942, at age
16, as a photographic laboratory technician inLife
magazine’s London bureau. Rejected by the mili-
tary because of his poor eyesight, Burrows served in
the Home Guard during World War II and experi-
enced the blitz firsthand. He worked inLife’s lab
until 1945, other than for a period during 1944
when he was conscripted by the government to
work in the British coal mines in support of the
war effort. His duties atLiferanged from fetching
tea and coffee for people in the office to processing
film and printing photographs taken by some of the
legendary combat photographers of World War II,
including Robert Capa.
Burrows’ professional career as a photographer
began in 1945. He was a freelance photographer
from 1945–1961, often under contract toLife.In
this period, he photographed more than 700 assign-
ments, working mainly in Europe, the Middle East,
and Africa, although he also went to India, Paki-
stan, and the United States. His varied subjects
included celebrities such as novelist Ernest Hem-
ingway, shots at bullfights in France and Spain,
politicians such as Winston Churchill, violent con-
flicts in Lebanon and the Congo, and archaeological
excavations. In this period Burrows also worked on
a project photographing great artworks in Europe
for reproduction inLife, an experience that honed
his sensitivity to pictorial composition and taught
him to understand and use color like an artist, as a
means to create emotion and bring out the nuances
of a visual story.
In 1961 Burrows became aLifestaff photogra-
pher, based in Hong Kong, a position he held until
his death in 1971. Although Vietnam subsumed
much of his time during the last 10 years of his life,
he also produced photo essays on subjects in places
from India to New Zealand, photographing the
architectural wonders of India’s Taj Mahal and
Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, the beauty of New Gui-
nea’s birds of paradise, Emperor Hirohito of JapanBURRI, RENE ́