Larry Burrows first went to Vietnam for 'Life' in 1962, when the war was still very small . . . Thanks to his talent, courage, and his particular feel for the Vietnamese people, he became the signature photographer of that war, a man whose journalism reached the level of art. More than any other photographer and print journalist, his work captured the different faces of the war. No one was there more often and got up closer than Larry.
Larry Burrows was not a very political man - his work is always beyond ideology of any kind. It is unusually sensitive to the victims of war. When he died in a helicopter crash on the Laotian border in 1971, he was mourned by those who were his friends and by those who felt they knew him because of his photographs, which brought so human a dimension to so cruel a war.
In retrospect, Larry Burrows was as much historian as photographer and artist. Because of his work, generations born long after he died will be able to witness and understand and feel the terrible events he recorded. This book, which recreates the eleven photo essays on Vietnam that he published in 'Life', is his last testament.
