ONE OF THE “MOST BRILLIANT, OR COURAGEOUS, PHOTOGRAPHERS IN VIETNAM”: LARRY BURROWS’ COMPASSIONATE PHOTOGRAPHER, 1972

BURROWS, Larry. Compassionate Photographer. New York: Time-Life Books, (1972). Quarto, original yellow cloth, original slipcase with mounted cover photogravure. $650.

First edition, published only one year after Burrows’ death in Vietnam, a retrospective tribute to his legendary career, from the collection of noted photojournalist Peter Turnley, featuring over 130 full color and black-and-white photogravures.

The Vietnam War “was a magnet for some of the world’s best photojournalists and generated a number of outstanding books. The best of these, coincidentally, were by British photographers… Larry Burrows’ The Compassionate Photographer brought home the brutality of war and its harrowing effect on all those caught up in it, in a series of dramatic images and sequences” (Parr & Badger II:238). One of “the most brilliant, or courageous, photographers in Vietnam,” who produced “many of the most memorable photographs of the conflict” (New York Times), Burrows once said, “‘I can’t afford the luxury of thinking about what could happen to me.’ He died, camera in hand, when his helicopter was shot down at Langvie, South Vietnam” (Lenman, 92). Griffiths left behind his work and his reputation as “a consummate reporter and storyteller as well as image-maker. An advocate for the individual soldier and the victims of war rather than for any political point of view… Griffith’s stories were full of emotion and gritty detail” (Panzer, 114). From the collection of award-winning photojournalist Peter Turnley, who has covered “almost every important international news event of the last 15 years” for Newsweek and Harper’s Magazine (New York Times); signed by Turnley on the half title.

Images clean and bright, faint soiling, as usual, to original cloth, lightest edge-wear to original slipcase. A photographic classic, near-fine.