Eddie Adams

Eddie Adams (1933-2004) winner of a Pulitzer Prize and recipient of more than five hundred international, national and local awards, is known to be one of the most decorated photographers in America today. Adams is certainly one of the most respected and versatile photographic talents of all time. Over his forty-year career, his work has encompassed the fields of journalism, corporate, editorial, fashion, entertainment, and advertising photography.

His most notable assignment was in Vietnam, where he accompanied both American and Vietnamese troops in over 150 operations. It was there, in 1968, that Adams captured the indelible image of Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong lieutenant at point-blank range. Adams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this photograph in 1969. Among the organizations to which Adams has been associated are the Associated Press and Time magazine. Adams continues to serve as a Special Correspondent for Parade Magazine for the past twenty years.

Years later, Adams experienced one of the most challenging and personally rewarding assignments of his life. He was the first to capture images of the "boat people," who were fleeing Vietnam. While on a thirty-foot fishing boat with fifty others, Adams documented their flight from the shattered nation. The photos were released and provoked an unprecedented response from the United States, including from the State Department and President Jimmy Carter. Within months, Carter had granted over 179,000 boat people entry into the United States. Adams comments, "My photographs directly and effectively communicated the urgency of the situation to Congress and the President. They provided proof that those events really happened-my pictures saved lives."

Since 1988, Adams' and his colleagues in the photography industry have held an annual event known as BARNSTORM: The Eddie Adams Photojournalism Workshop, which continues to be held at Adams's farm in upstate New York. Sponsored by Eastman Kodak Company and Nikon, Inc., the Workshop brings together student and amateur photographers and teams them up with seasoned professionals for four days of discovering, documenting, enlightening and sharing in the craft of photography.