Hugh Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War, capturing some of the most enduring images of the era, has died. Last week he suffered a brain hemorrhage and never regained consciousness. He died on Friday at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong. Van Es was 67.

One of his most famous photos is that of the fall of Saigon in 1975, showing evacuees scaling a ladder onto a helicopter from a rooftop. The image, in no subtle way, became a metaphor for the United States’ profound policy failures in Vietnam.

Van Es arrived in Hong Kong as a freelance photographer in 1967, joining the South China Morning Post. After a stretch as a photographer for the Associated Press from 1969 to 1972, he covered the last three years of the Vietnam war for United Press International. His first celebrated photo was of a wounded soldier with a tiny cross gleaming against his dark silhouette taken in May of 1969 during the battle of Hamburger Hill.

 

But Van Es’ most lasting image was taken on the final day of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam on April 29, 1975. Van Es was in the Saigon UPI bureau offices when he saw a few dozen Americans climbing a ladder trying to board  one of the CIA’s own Air American helicopters on a rooftop just a few blocks away at 22 Gia Long Street, which sat about a half a mile from the embassy. From his vantage point on the UPI balcony, Van Es captured the scene with a 300mm lens, the longest one he had. The building in the picture was an apartment that housed C.I.A. officials and families and not Saigon’s American Embassy as has been erroneously believed over the years.

The legendary street photographer Helen Levitt died earlier this month at the age of 95. Besides being a still photographer, Levitt was also involved in the making of documentary films in the late 1940s as a director, cinematographer and writer. For In the Street (1948) she was assisted by renowned New York writer James Agee and artist Janice Loeb. This silent film documents the grim realities of Harlem street-life in the days after the Second World War. In the Street was selected in 2006 for the National Film Registry list. For The Quiet One (1948), Levitt worked once again with Agee and Loeb; this time she received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay. The Quiet One is an account of the rehabilitation at the Wiltwyck School of an emotionally disturbed African-American boy. Levitt's photography career would span more than seven decades. Here is more of Helen Levitt's work.

Earlier this month the legendary photographer Helen Levitt died at the age of 95. In the 1930’s she pioneered the art of street photography, most often documenting the neighborhoods and the people of her hometown, New York City. Her influence is undeniable. With the help of an inconspicuous Leica camera she captured small, everyday events, exceptional moments and quiet dramas. Someone once noted that Helen Levitt was "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time." Here is some of her work.

The Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Rocco Morabito, famous for his shot of a utility line worker saving the life a fellow lineman, died this past weekend. He was 88. According to news reports Morabito's health had been in decline and he had been in hospice care for some time.

 

His photograph, tagged "Kiss of Life" by editors at Florida’s Jacksonville Journal, appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world in 1967. The photo dramatically details electrical lineman Randall Champion dangling unconscious from the power pole after being shocked by the high-voltage wire, as fellow lineman J.D. Thompson tries resuscitating him. Morabito was driving along West 26th Street in Jacksonville in July 1967 after returning from covering a railroad strike when he saw the incident. He called his paper to call an ambulance then grabbed his camera.

 

Morabito won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1968.

 

Earlier in his career another of Morabito’s most famous images was featured in Life magazine. In 1958 his photograph of some elementary school kids reciting the Pledge of Allegiance along with a pet rabbit, its paws over its heart, was given the full page Life treatment.

 

Morabito, once a newsboy selling papers, worked his way into photography for the Jacksonville Journal following the Second World War where he served as a B-17 ball-turret gunner. He worked for the paper for some 42 years, 33 of them as a photographer. Morabito retired in 1982.

 

As for Randall Champion, he survived being electrocuted and died thirty five years later in 2002 at the age of 64.

James Presley Ball was one of the most successful and famous African-American daguerreotypists of the19th century. Born in 1825 in Virginia, Ball opened his first photography studio at the age of twenty in Cincinnati, Ohio, just a few years after the invention of the daguerreotype. Business didn’t fare well, but the following year when he returned to Richmond, Virginia, Ball found considerable success with his new studio. By 1847 he took to the road again, this time as a traveling daguerreotypist, eventually returning to Cincinnati. In 1855 Ball published an abolitionist pamphlet depicting the horrors of slavery; accompanying his publication was an exhibition of his daguerreotypes on the subject of slavery, which he exhibited several times in the pre-Civil War years. After living some three decades in Ohio, he moved to Minneapolis, opening a daguerreotype studio there with his son. In 1887 Ball moved to Helena, Montana. That same year he was selected as the official photographer for a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. While living in Montana he was also elected a delegate to the Republican convention for the Montana territory in 1894. In his years in Montana he produced hundreds of incredible photographs depicting life in the White, Black and Chinese communities. In 1900, he moved to Seattle, Washington opening his final studio, the Globe Photo Studio. In poor health, James Presley Ball moved once again, this time to Honolulu, Hawaii, where he died in 1904. His extensive body of work is housed at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Historical Society, Montana Historical Society, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, as well as in many private collections.