and Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, the 1964 Olym-
pic Games, a historical piece on the British East
India Company, and the 1970 cyclone in the Ganges
Delta in what was then East Pakistan.
In1962BurrowswenttoVietnamforthefirsttime.
The war was a small story in 1962 as far as the United
States was concerned: President Kennedy had only
recently sent American soldiers as advisers to the
South Vietnamese Army, with no commitment of
combat troops. Burrows, then 36, grasped at once
that Vietnam had the potential of an epic story.
According to David Halberstam in his introduction
toLarryBurrows:Vietnam(2002),Vietnam‘‘wasthe
assignment [Burrows] had always wanted....He was
drawn to it by both its elemental humanity and its
parallel cruelty and violence, and by the fact that it
lent itself so well to what he wanted to do—the
magazine photo spread.’’ Burrows used the essay
formatbrilliantlytotellcompellingstories,including
his first long Vietnam feature inLife, titledIn Color:
The Vicious Fighting in Vietnam, We Wade Deeper
into Jungle War, a 14-page story with a foldout cover
published on January 25, 1963, which helped convey
toAmericansthequalityofthatcruelcivilwarfought
by small bands of soldiers in the countryside, pitting
Vietnamese against Vietnamese. In this and subse-
quent essays, Burrows demonstrated his pioneering
understanding of when and how to use color effec-
tively for war photography, showing human dramas
against landscapes of often stunning beauty.
Burrows had the advantage over press photogra-
phers working for daily newspapers, who worked on
tight deadlines, of having time to conceptualize and
develop a story, often spending months immersing
himself intellectually and visually in a long photo
essay. Press photographers in Vietnam had extraor-
dinary freedom of access to combat zones, and Bur-
rows was fearless about getting close to the action.
Stories abound about his courage and dedication,
including strapping himself to the open doorway of
an airplane to shoot photos for his 1966 essay,The
Air War.
A chronological survey of Burrows’s Vietnam
photo essays demonstrates his intellectual grasp of
the important trends of the ever-escalating war, with
its terribly mounting violence and evolving psycho-
logical texture.One Ride with Yankee Papa 13,a
spread of 22 photographs published inLifeon April
16, 1965, chronicled a dangerous helicopter mission
during which marines attempted to rescue wounded
comrades, one of whom died. Focusing in particular
on a young crew chief, Burrows’s photo story con-
veyed the soldier’s emotional journey in the course of
the mission from grinning newcomer to devastated
veteran.Operation Prairie, published on October 28,
1966, documented a bloody six-month Marine infan-
try campaign that took a devastating toll in U.S.
casualties. One photo from that story,Reaching Out
(during the aftermath of taking hill 484, South Viet-
nam), which shows bandaged soldiers covered in
mud, is one of Burrows’s most frequently reproduced
photos. Although Burrows said he began working in
Vietnam with leanings as a hawk, his ten-page photo
essay,Vietnam: A Degree of Disillusion,publishedon
September 19, 1969, expressed, Burrows wrote in one
of his captions, ‘‘a degree of disillusion and demor-
alization in the Army and the population that sur-
prised and shocked me.’’
On February 10, 1971, as the invasion of Laos
was imminent, Burrows and four other combat
photographers—Kent Potter, Keizaburo Shima-
moto, Henri Huet, and Tu Vu—rode aboard a
South Vietnamese helicopter that was shot down
by antiaircraft guns along the Vietnam-Laos bor-
der. Burrows, who was 44 years old, left behind his
wife Vicky, son Russell, and daughter Deborah.
Twenty-seven years later, in 1998, an American
search and recovery team excavated the crash site
in Laos, recovering pieces of film and a Leica cam-
era that most likely had belonged to Burrows.JEANRobertson
Seealso:Capa, Robert; Life Magazine; War Photo-
graphyBiography
Born in London, England, 22 May 1926. Self-educated in
photography. Darkroom assistant, Keystone Photographic
Agency, London, 1941; Photographic laboratory techni-
cian,LifeMagazine, London, 1942–1945; conscripted into
British coal mines during World War II, 1945; freelance
photographer, mostly under contract toLifemagazine,
working primarily in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa,
1945–1961;Lifestaff photographer, based in Hong Kong,
with responsibility for an area from India to New Zealand,
including Vietnam, 1961–1971. Three-time winner of the
Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal; awarded
British Press Pictures of the Year, 1965, 1966; awarded the
World Press Photo, The Hague, 1966; named Magazine
Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photogra-
phers’ Association (NPPA), 1967; recipient of the Order of
Iron Mike (US Marine Corps), 1967. Missing, presumed
dead, Laos, 10 February, 1971.Individual Exhibitions
1998 Larry Burrows at War: Vietnam 1961–1972; Laurence
Miller Gallery, New York, New YorkBURROWS, LARRY