 CLICK HERE TO VIEW A GALLERY OF EDDIE ADAMS' IMAGES
All images © Eddie Adams
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| Eddie Adams with Cameras |
In
this month's Cover Story, Alyssa Adams, her sister Cindy Lou Adkins,
and documentary filmmaker Susan Morgan Cooper share their memories of
this immensely talented man (Cindy and Susan were co-producers of the
film, “An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story”). Throughout his
notable career, Eddie Adams has captured a wide array of subjects,
which include 13 wars, 6 American Presidents, numerous celebrities and
children with terminal illnesses. His powerful image of Vietnam’s
Police Chief, Lt. Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing prisoner Nguyen
Van Lam on a Saigon street in 1968 earned him the Pulitzer Prize in
1969, and some people have credited this iconic photograph with the end
of the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, Adams resented having taken it. He and
his wife Alyssa put on the Eddie Adams Workshop in upstate New York
until he succumbed to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in 2004 at the age of
71. To this day, Alyssa continues to carry on this tradition and has
just completed the 21st workshop in October 2008.
Adams
started his photographic career at the local newspaper before moving on
to larger newspapers and magazines. He joined the Marines at a young
age and was assigned to Korea. Later, he worked for Associated Press
and went to Vietnam as a photographer. “He was a Marine through and
through until the day he died,” Cindy says. “He took that very
seriously.” Every year at the workshop, a memorial service is held in
which Adams has always honored five dear friends, all photographers who
covered Vietnam, and who died in the war. “It was always a very
emotional thing for Eddie and a very important part of the workshop,”
she says.
Haunted by Vietnam
Cindy
gives an example of how Eddie Adams always stayed true to his word,
having been a Marine. One of the attendees at the most recent Eddie
Adams Workshop was a woman named Tana who was an officer in the Air
Force and had known Adams for years. She also teaches photography.
“Tana asked Eddie years ago to go to her graduation,” Cindy relates. He
agreed to do it, and a big turnout was anticipated because Adams was
going to speak. However, she wasn’t allowed to pick him up from the
airport; she was required to have a high-ranking officer do the honors.
Nonetheless, Adams wanted her to be there. So a lieutenant accompanied
her, and when Adams got in the car, he shouted at her, “You *#*! owe
me,” much to her embarrassment. She asked, “Okay, what did I do,” and
he responded, “I’ve been waiting for months to get this interview with
Nelson Mandela, and they finally said, ‘okay, you can do it,’ but I
told them I couldn’t because I’m speaking at this graduation!”
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| Execution in Vietnam |
When
we discussed Adams’ famous image of the execution of a Viet Cong by
Vietnam’s Police Chief, Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Cindy says that at
the time, “He had no idea of the impact this photo would have. After
all was said and done, he felt that he had ruined the General’s life as
well.” (Adams has stated, “The General killed the Viet Cong with his
pistol; I killed the Colonel with my camera.”) In “An Unlikely Weapon,”
he criticizes the image for its composition and for not being taken at
the right time of day. He made an attempt to visit Nguyen Loan after he
moved to the U.S. and was running a pizza parlor in Virginia. There was
graffiti on the walls of the bathroom stating accusations like “we know
who you are,” followed by further epithets. “This man didn’t have it
easy after that photo was taken,” Cindy says. “What people don’t
realize is that Nguyen Van Lam had murdered many friends of the
Colonel. The execution wasn’t just a random shooting.” At the time that
Adams shot these photos, a CBS news crew shot video footage, some of
which appears in the documentary film. However, it was Adams’ singular
image of this shooting that helped to change the outcome of the war.
Effecting Change
By
contrast, Adams loved the “Boat People” from Vietnam who attempted to
come to America in 1977 and was very proud that he could help them. He
got aboard one of the boats and took a series of images. The photos
presented to Congress helped with the decision to allow Vietnamese
refugees into the U.S. Cindy says, “It’s an example of how photos can
make a difference.” Adams was also fond of photographing children. One
incident that they unfortunately couldn’t fit into the documentary
occurred when he took pictures of a child who had cancer. His image of
a little girl holding a blanket who had lost her hair from chemotherapy
was on the cover of Parade magazine. Karen Loucks, a woman from
Colorado, was so moved by this photograph that she started Project
Linus, a nonprofit organization (named after the “Peanuts” character),
and began making blankets to donate to children with cancer. She even
had the opportunity to meet Adams on the Oprah Winfrey show and tell
him in person how much his picture inspired her. “She and Eddie became
very good friends,” says Cindy. “She came up to the workshop every year
and they stayed in touch until the day he died.”
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| Coal Miner and his Donkey |
Another
of Adams’ favorite images was the one of a coal miner and his donkey.
“This man came back from Viet Nam,” Cindy comments. “Not only did he
serve his country, but he was running a coal mine.” She says that Eddie
related strongly to working-class people.
Although Adams was
best known for his photojournalism, he photographed a wide variety of
subjects. He struck up a friendship with magazine publisher Bob
Guccione and took pictures for Penthouse for a brief time. Cindy
describes Adams’ stint with Penthouse as “short lived,” and something
he did for fun. Adams shot for the AP for a number of years and later
took pictures for magazines. He also photographed movie posters, annual
reports, and other corporate work. And after some initial resistance,
he signed a contract with Parade magazine. “He told Walter Anderson
(the editor and CEO of Parade), ‘I don’t want to do this, but I’ll take
a meeting.’ But Parade gave him a lot of freedom,” says Cindy. “He
could decide how he wanted to photograph somebody, like Ronald Reagan
lifting weights in his tee-shirt, or Arnold Schwarzenegger with a
rubber ducky.” Adams also had the opportunity to travel around the
world and photograph diplomats, presidents, world leaders, and
celebrities, such as Clint Eastwood, Louis Armstrong, Mother Teresa and
Pope John Paul. This publication (which appears in hundreds of Sunday
editions of newspapers) has perhaps the highest circulation of any
magazine in the U.S.
Alyssa Adams is currently working on a
book of Eddie’s images from Vietnam. Entitled Eddie Adams: Vietnam,
this book will be published by Umbrage, and will be available in early
2009. It will feature many of his powerful images from the war. During
his lifetime, Eddie never took the time to publish a book, because he
wanted to look forward, not backward.
The Eddie Adams Workshops
In
1983 or ’84, Alyssa worked for a graphic design firm called Carbone
Smolan & Associates. “Leslie Smolan is the sister of Rick Smolan,
who started the Day in a Life books with David Cohen,” Alyssa explains.
The firm was designing the book series. “I met Eddie at a birthday
party for David, because he was a photographer on their project,” she
says. At this point, Adams was shooting for Parade, which was doing
more human-interest stories at the time.
Alyssa currently works as Deputy Photo Editor for T.V. Guide,
and is the Executive Director of the Barnstorming Workshops. Her
background is in communication arts, and she has an interest in
photography, although she’s not a photographer. “Eddie and I started
the workshops together, as well as the Bathhouse Studio (his photo
studio in New York). How did the workshops begin? “Eddie bought
property in upstate New York in 1976,” she says. “There was a farmhouse
and a dilapidated dairy barn. He always had thoughts of having a photo
farm.” His friends who were photographers would help with the
renovation of the barn during the day and they would show their slides
in the evening. “One day we were walking down the street,” she says,
“and I said, ‘wouldn’t it be great to put on some workshops based
solely on merit, rather than how much one could pay to get in.”
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| Chinese Army |
Adams
approached Nikon and Kodak with this idea during the late ‘80s. “He
said from the very beginning that he wanted 100 students,” Alyssa says.
People asked, “why don’t you scale back to 25 or 50 to start out with?”
But he insisted that it had to be 100. “That number is part of the
reason why it works,” she says. “He divided them into 10 groups of 10
and invited professionals from all over the country and overseas.”
Today,
she operates the workshops with a board of directors and the workshop
producer, Mirjam Evers. “It only takes place once a year, but it takes
us all year to put it together.” The number of applicants varies from
year to year, but approximately 1000 to 2000 hopeful photographers
apply in February for the four-day long workshop, which is held over
the Columbus Day weekend in October. After reviewing the applicants’
work and selecting the very best in June, 100 photographers are
selected to come to the farm in Jeffersonville, New York, where the
Workshop makes its home. Nikon is the major sponsor. “The sponsors and
the faculty who donate their time are the ones who make it happen.”
The
people who lead these workshops are some of the most influential
photographers and photo editors, representing publications and agencies
such as the AP, Getty, The New York Times, National Geographic, Parade, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times,
and Noor, among others. “We’ve had a lot of great people up
there. Peter Jennings was there one year, and Kim Phuc (the young
Vietnamese girl in the image who was running from napalm, photographed
by Nick Ut).” Bill Eppridge, Joe Rosenthal, Carl Mydans, Alfred
Eisenstaedt, Cornell Capa, James Nachtwey, Mary Ellen Mark, Eugene
Richards and Gordon Parks have also been among the talent who have
appeared at the workshops.
“There was never a dull moment when
Eddie was around,” says Cindy fondly, adding that he wasn’t always the
easiest person to get along with. “But he was a big influence on my
life. I didn’t realize the strength of his work and what a rich archive
he had until I got older.” She says that she learned a lot during the
time the documentary was made. “It would be great if they could show
the documentary every year to the students at the workshop, because
they could say, ‘this is who Eddie was.’”
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| Fidel Castro |
The Making of a Documentary
Throughout
portions of “An Unlikely Weapon,” Eddie himself appears in brief
episodes that Cindy originally filmed. “I saw Eddie quite frequently
because he was coming to L.A. once a month.” She was the one who had
the idea of doing a documentary of his life and work. As co-producer of
the film, Cindy interviewed him, traveled with him, “and followed him
around with a camera.” She wound up with hours of footage after a
while, but didn’t know where to go from there.
Then the owner of
an Italian restaurant where Cindy dined introduced her to filmmaker
Susan Morgan Cooper. “We met, she loved the idea, and wanted to come on
board as the co-producer and director,” says Cindy. “I wanted to do
this documentary because I’ve always had a fascination with
photographers who lay down their lives to bring back a story,” Susan
explains. (Coincidentally, Susan made a short movie about 12 years ago
called “Stringers” about a photographer in Vietnam, and had even used
some photos taken by Adams for this film.)
Ultimately, it was
Adams’ decision as to whether Susan would do the documentary. So she
flew to New York, and they spent an afternoon together. “They had a
really great time,” says Cindy. “They drank Coronas, and he showed her
a brief documentary of images he had taken of a 10-year-old boy who had
Progeria (a rapidly deteriorating children’s disease).” Susan says, “He
set this documentary to the Dolly Parton song, ‘I will Always Love
You.’ We sat on the sofa and sobbed, and it was the most incredibly
bonding moment. Then I asked him if he wanted me to make this
documentary about him, and he said yes. He gave me his seal of
approval.” Unfortunately, Susan only met Eddie on that single occasion.
Susan
has done a number of documentary films, including one that focused on a
girl named Marianna from Croatia whose mother had died during the
Balkan war. She moved to California and had great difficulty
assimilating to her new surroundings. When Susan met her, she was very
overweight and suicidal. “This started my documentary career,” she
says. Happily, Marianna was greatly helped by this film, and has gotten
a college degree and is planning to get married. “This is one thing I
think I share with Eddie Adams; I have a fascination with people who
are displaced and downtrodden,” Susan says. She will also be working on
a film about a policeman from East Los Angeles who took kids out of
gangs and turned them into a championship Roller Hockey team, entitled
“Roadrunners.” Cindy is also a veteran of the film industry. She was
Associate Producer of a well-received documentary called “Blues by the
Beach,” about a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, and has been an actress
for about 20 years, with roles in movies, television and commercials.
Over
the four years of production on “An Unlikely Weapon,” Susan interviewed
people like Peter Jennings (“my hero”), Tom Brokaw, Douglas Kirkland,
and Bill Eppridge. “Every single photographer that I interviewed, I
fell in love with for a time,” she says, “because there’s a certain
quality about this type of photographer who’s been through a great
deal.” She adds, “I chose Bill Eppridge to be Eddie’s voice when Eddie
wasn’t there because he has such a wonderful authenticity to him. He’s
such a great storyteller.”
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| Arnold Schwarzenegger & Rubber Ducky |
Susan
was in Italy working on another film when she was notified that Adams
had Lou Gehrig’s Disease. “By the time I got back, he was quite gravely
ill,” she recalls. “I chose not to film him while he was sick because
it was very important to me that I show the man in his heroic
proportions.” Adams passed away in 2004 before the documentary was
completed. Nonetheless, Susan had given him her word that she would do
the documentary. She says she didn’t want to do a historical piece on
him, but she decided that “by hook or by crook” she would somehow get
his personality and essence on film.
She started out with
Hal Buell and an Associated Press interview he had previously given
her. Susan says that she interviews many people and selects the best
parts for her films. “For me, making a documentary is like panning for
gold…and I string these pieces of gold together.” She found some good
things in the interview, but felt she needed so much more. “Each night
before I went to sleep, I would call up to the heavens and said,
‘Eddie, you’ve got to help me out here. I need to find your voice.” One
day, she found a box containing a tape without a label and almost
discarded it. But instead, she put in her camera and discovered that
there was some footage of Eddie walking in New York, which was the
answer to her prayers. “I labeled that tape, ‘Eddie from God,’” she
says. Susan’s film editor and cinematographer, Issac Hagy, shot film of
New York to expand on the footage she had found. “It started to give me
the voice I wanted.”
Susan and Isaac did a lot of research for
the film, and she interviewed many people at the Barnstorming
Workshops. Then she cold-called people like Tom Brokaw and Bob
Schiffer, who didn’t hesitate to help out with the project. “They
didn’t know me from Adam, but to me, this spoke volumes about the
respect they had for Eddie,” she says. In addition to these interviews,
Kiefer Sutherland did the narration and Kyle Eastwood (Clint Eastwood’s
son) did the musical score.
At the Todd AO studios in Santa
Monica, Sound Director Mark Stockenger and the sound technicians
watched the film and praised her highly. “These people are hard-working
artists themselves, who sometimes get little recognition,” she says,
“And like Eddie Adams, they often believe that their work is no good. I
think it really hit home to them that he was an artist who had done an
incredible body of work, and yet at times, he felt—as they do—that his
work didn’t amount to a hill of beans.” When they first screened the
film, people told Susan they were very moved by it. She thought she had
created a documentary that would appeal primarily to photographers,
“but I found that we had made a documentary that resonated with people
from 18 to 80, men and women alike, and it was really about making a
difference.”
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| Mother Theresa & Baby |
“If
I hadn’t met Susan, this documentary would never have happened,” says
Cindy gratefully. “Meeting her was a stroke of luck; this is a love
letter to my family.” Susan is now a close friend who often travels to
be with the Adkins family. “I’m happy that the film was made because
it’s such a beautiful portrait of Eddie,” adds Alyssa. “An Unlikely
Weapon” has been making the round of film festivals around the world,
and has garnered much praise along the way. The Los Angeles Times wrote
a wonderful page-long review of the film when it was shown at Docuweek
in L.A. It has also been awarded “Best Documentary” in a festival held
in Johannesburg, South Africa. It will be shown at the Ojai film
festival soon, as well as the Santa Fe Film Festival in December.
At
1:00 in the morning recently, Susan discovered her 17-year-old
daughter, Alexandra, studying Eddie Adams’ images on her computer. When
she queried the teenager about the late hour, she replied, “Mom, I do
this every night.” Susan says that after being inspired by his work,
Alexandra wants to study photography. “I can’t explain what an
inspiration this man has been,” Susan states. “I lived with him for
four years with his image on my monitor.”
To order a DVD of the documentary, go to www.anunlikelyweapon.com.
To learn more about the Eddie Adams Workshops, visit www.barnstormworkshop.com.
See Robert Farber's interview with Eddie Adams at www.photoworkshop.com/static/workshop/interviews/eddie_adams/interview_adams.html
And an audio interview at http://www.photoworkshop.com/rooms3d/media_library
CLICK HERE TO VIEW A GALLERY OF EDDIE ADAM'S IMAGES
Let us know if you found this article useful, and tell us what kinds of articles you'd like to see in upcoming issues. Send your comments and ideas to Lynne Eodice.
© Copyright 2008 by PHOTOWORKSHOP.COM
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Last Updated: Jul 3rd, 2009 - 15:04:15
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