Photography : Eddie Adams + Portraits.

Eddie  Adams. 

Eddie Adams was born in 1933 in America. He was a photographer and photojournalist, known for his portraits of celebrities and his photographs he produced in 13 wars beginning in Korea in the early 1950s and ending in Kuwait in 1991. He did three tours of Vietnam with the Associated Press and won the Pulitzer Prize.

In class we looked his very famous image 'Saigon Execution' made in 1968. This image's wide spread publication brought attention to the brutality of war in American and people started to question what they thought they knew. It became a symbol for the anti war movement of south Vietnamese corruption and brutality. 

We were asked in class to question this and to do some research behind the story of this image and find out what we could about who these people were and what was happening. 

The man holding the gun is General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The man who is about to be executed is Nguyen Van Lem, the captain of a terrorist gang. I read that he was responsible for the death of one of  General Loans deputies family. After Loan shot Lem, the general said “If you hesitate, if you didn’t do your duty, the men won’t follow you.”

Years later in NYT magazine Eddie Adams was quoted saying:

"Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world"

photographs exclude context. It made me think about the General and what i would have done. I will never be in a position where i have to point a gun at the head of a man responsible for so much death, and decided weather or not to pull the trigger...but if i was could i do it? Should i do it? is an eye for an eye the best way? What else could i do? If i did nothing would he be stopped? If he had killed my family would it be easier? When you put yourself in another persons shoes everything becomes a question and things you thought you knew get flipped around.

Knowing this, what do i think of the image now? I am unsure. I don't think badly of General Loan, i think he did what he thought was right and i am in no position to say it was wrong. But still, looking into the face of a man who is seconds from death, his face frozen in that twisted state of fear forever, is something i find very disturbing and hard to look at.

Shepherd, Bethlehem, 1970

I started to look at more of his work, i found it hard to find a lot of his other work online as quickly as you might for other photographers because 'Saigon Execution' is so famous it is what comes up online first.

I do find this kind of photography very interesting, it really makes me understand the power of a camera and how it can tell a story in a single photo.

Obviously he did a lot of journalistic photography while covering all the wars he did, and he took some amazing images. But i found out he also did a lot of portraiture of celebrities.

Mother Teresa cradling an armless baby orphan at her order's orphanage in Calcutta, India, 1978

Some of the portraits he took are great. I think he has really captured the personality of each person in these.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles, 2003

Clint Eastwood

Ray Charles, 2002

It really shows you how black and white can work to set a tone for the feeling of an image. Also not just black and white but the contrast and shadows within the black and white.

This got me starting to think about portraits...

 I started thinking about how i can create different moods with things like black and white and cropping etc. I decided to start playing around with some of the portraits i took in class on Friday. 

I think turning something black and white instantly changes how i feel about the image... but what about something else... more than just turning up the contrast, how can i create atmosphere... to get that. I wanted to think about making something mysterious and serious, something that will require some photo manipulation..

I wanted to see how far i could push one image on Photoshop to really set in a more serious tone. I started playing with the brush tools trying to add atmosphere and texture.

I really liked making this and decided to keep going on a separate blog post, so i can refer back to it without getting lost in my posts.






Sources:

http://100photos.time.com/photos/eddie-adams-saigon-execution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODzDGlmh8kg

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/world/asia/vietnam-execution-photo.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42864421

http://www.eddieadamsworkshop.com/homedg-1-2/

http://www.monroegallery.com/photographers/display/id/66