Horst Faas and His Army

The most striking aspect of the career of Horst Faas, the A.P. combat photographer and editor who died last week, is the way he both took pictures and handed out cameras. In Vietnam, in the early years, he would disappear into the jungle with troops, or hop on a plane to Laos, looking for the war. According to a story William Prochnau tells in “Once Upon a Distant War,” there was a rumor that he'd actually led soldiers through a minefield—but really he'd just suggested that it might be better to go around the field, and then followed after them. More often, though, he led; “Horst's army” included young Vietnamese photographers and American soldiers who carried the cameras he gave them and trained them to use, and other A.P. photographers whose work he fought to send out into the world. One wonders, looking at the images that have come from our recent wars, what the iconography of Vietnam or earlier conflicts might have been like if everyone, on both sides, was carrying a camera phone. Faas, in his own way and with more basic tools, was trying to find out.