War photographer John G. Morris in a fox hole during the Battle of Normandy.
Photo: Ned Buddy
July 30, 2017: Death of American photographer John G. Morris, veteran of the Battle of Normandy
Source: AFP
American photographer John G. Morris died Friday in Paris at the age of 100, the Magnum agency, for which he was the main director for many years, announced on its website.
Known primarily for his skills as a photo editor, the New Jersey native notably edited the exclusive photos of his friend Robert Capa taken during the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, and published a few days later in the American magazine Life.
Equipped with a camera borrowed from the office, he decided to leave for France. For a month, he followed the advance of American troops in Normandy, then in Brittany, accompanying Life photographers Bob Capa, Robert Landry, and Frank Scherschel. There, he met people who welcomed the Americans with open arms but also discovered a German army in disarray. His memoirs are published in the book “Somewhere in France – The Summer of 1944.”
In 1953, he joined Magnum, co-founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, becoming its chief operational officer, notably responsible for choosing the destinations to which the agency’s photographers would be sent.
“John Morris played a very important role during the early years of Magnum,” wrote the agency’s managing director, David Kogan, in a statement published Friday on the Magnum website.
After leaving the agency in the early 1960s, he also worked for the American newspapers The Washington Post and The New York Times.
He was notably responsible for the publication, on the front page of The New York Times, of a photo of a Vietnamese policeman in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) executing at point-blank range a man suspected of collaborating with the Vietcong, despite the reluctance of some of the editorial staff.
He also secured the publication, again on the front page of the New York daily, of a photograph of a young Vietnamese girl running naked on a road after an American napalm bombing.
Both photos became symbols of the violence of the Vietnam conflict and each earned their authors the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.
“A legend has passed away,” tweeted the World Press Photo association, which organizes an annual press photography competition.
“I am saddened to learn of the death of John G. Morris. He was a great photo editor and a dear friend. He left his mark on photojournalism,” tweeted Jean-François Leroy, co-founder of the Perpignan photojournalism festival Visa pour l’image.
The French Minister of Culture, Françoise Nyssen, also expressed her “emotion,” paying tribute in a tweet to “a legend of images and journalism, a great witness of the 20th century.”
2017 news of the Normandy landing beaches
