Larry Burrows, photographer of Vietnam
« British photojournalist (1926-1971), nine years covering Vietnam for Life, killed on assignment in Laos. »
Larry Burrows started at Life at 16 as a darkroom boy. He developed the negative of Capa's The Falling Soldier there. His turn came in 1962: he was sent to Vietnam for what he thought would be a few months. He would stay nine years.
Reaching Out (1966), in which a wounded Marine extends his hand to a comrade, became an anti-war icon. One Ride with Yankee Papa 13 (1965) was one of the first colour combat photo-essays published. Burrows flew on combat helicopters, photographed under fire, technique never faltering.
On 10 February 1971, his helicopter was shot down over Laos along with those of photographers Henri Huet, Kent Potter and Keisaburō Shimamoto. Four colleagues, four different newsrooms. The bodies were not recovered until 1998. Burrows remains the contemporary canon of colour war photography.