[1933 – 2004] American photographer and photojournalist
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I'm not a great believer in the power of the moving image. A still image has greater lasting power. A still photographer has to show the whole fucking movie in one picture. On the screen, it's over and back in the can in seconds. A still picture is going to be there forever.
Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world.
The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera.
On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam’s police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.
Sometimes a picture can be misleading because it does not tell the whole story. I don’t say what he did was right, but he was fighting a war and he was up against some pretty bad people.
On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.
I always tell photographers that you never know who is looking at your pictures or how your pictures are going to affect other people’s lives. I wasn’t out to save the world. I was out to get a story.
All that a Pulitzer really does is give the obit writers something to put between the commas after your name.
To tell the truth, I didn’t get scared too often. The adrenalin rush was so strong, I didn’t get scared until it was over. The next night, the next month. Or just last week.
If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture.
People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.
Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. Words and pictures have a continuing struggle for primacy. In my mind, a person can write the best story in the world; but a photograph is absolute.
How do you know you wouldn’t have pulled the trigger yourself?
I was getting money for showing one man killing another. Two lives were destroyed and I was getting paid for it.
I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture—the threat, the interrogation. But it didn’t happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC’s head and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time.
Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.
