Prize-winning combat photographer Horst Faas dies at 79

PanARMENIAN.Net - Horst Faas, a prize-winning combat photographer who carved out new standards for covering war with a camera and became one of the world's legendary photojournalists, has died at 79, Belfast Telegraph reported.

A native of Germany who joined the U.S.-based news co-operative The Associated Press there in 1956, Faas photographed wars, revolutions, the Olympic Games and events in between. But he was best known for covering Vietnam, where he was severely wounded in 1967 and won four major photo awards including the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes.

As chief of AP's photo operations in Saigon for a decade beginning in 1962, Faas covered the fighting while recruiting and training new talent from among foreign and Vietnamese freelancers. The result was "Horst's army" of young photographers, who fanned out with Faas-supplied cameras and film and stern orders to "come back with good pictures".

His reputation as a demanding taskmaster and perfectionist belied a humanistic streak he was loath to admit, while helping less fortunate ex-colleagues and other causes. In later years Faas turned his training skills into a series of international photojournalism symposiums.

He was hospitalised first in Bangkok and then in Germany, where doctors traced his permanent paralysis from the waist down to a spinal haemorrhage caused by blood-thinning heart medication. Although requiring a wheelchair, he continued to travel to photo exhibits and other professional events, mainly in Europe.