Dayhoff Westminster Soundtrack: Art photographers Leroy Catherine

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Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Famed Vietnam combat photographer Catherine Leroy was in Vietnam from Feb 1966 to March of 1969.

Kevin E. Dayhoff, August 18, 2015 www.kevindayhoff.net

I was recently reminded of the legendary combat photographer Catherine Leroy. I was not aware that she had died… She died unexpectedly July 8, 2006.

According to a tribute to her written by Jay Defoore and published in Popular Photography on December 19, 2008, “Leroy first arrived in Saigon in February of 1966 without ever having published a photo. She had in her possession a Leica M2 and a mere $100. Just 21 years of age, she had no formal photographic training and had never been more than a few hundred miles from Paris. Through pluck and luck, she would go on to become the most famous female war photographer of the Vietnam era.

The standard rate for a Vietnam photograph that moved on the wire in those days was $15.00 per photograph. She had many of her photos published in Look and Life.

She was the stuff of legend with Marines. She spent a great deal of time in theater with Marines.

According to her obituary by Phil Davidson that ran in The Independent on Monday, July 17, 2006, “She was the first newsperson, male or female, to parachute into combat with US forces, and the first to photograph the Vietcong behind their own lines after she was captured during the Tet offensive but charmed her way to freedom. When she was wounded by a mortar round, she believed it would have killed her had her sturdy Nikon F2 not stopped the biggest piece of shrapnel.

In that story, retold by Defoore, “Leroy's legend was only aided by her independent spirit and resilience. On May 19, 1967, Leroy was injured by a mortar while on patrol with a group of Marines. "We were being mortared again and again, and there was nowhere to hide," she recounted to American Photographer. ‘I remember lifting my camera up to take a picture when there was a huge bang and I went down in the grass. I was conscious but couldn't move, and I was completely covered with blood -- and terrified that nobody would see me because I was covered by grass.’

“A month after suffering the worst of the mortar round, Leroy was back to tackling some of the most dangerous stories imaginable. In January of the next year Leroy and fellow French journalist Francois Mazure were captured by the North Vietnamese and she photographed her captors for a cover story in Life magazine.”

Many of her photographs have iconographic of the war in Southeast Asia. First among equals was ““Corpsman in anguish,” in which Corpsman Vernon Wike, 2/3rd Marine, looks in anguish when he realizes that his buddy is dead. Battle for Hill 881. 1967

According to her obituary by Phil Davidson that ran in The Independent on Monday, July 17, 2006, “Her most famous pictures were three shot in quick succession, but without a motor-drive, showing a young US marine corpsman (medic), Vernon Wike, crouched in tall grass in 1967 during the battle for Hill 881 near Khe Sanh. He is cradling a comrade who had just been shot by a Vietcong guerrilla.

In the first frame, Wike, still smoking the cigarette he had lit before the shooting, has both hands on his buddy's chest, trying to staunch the wound. In the second, he is trying to detect a heartbeat. In the third, perhaps her most famous, image, known as Corpsman in Anguish, he has just realised his buddy is dead. Leroy later recalled that Wike then ran from cover, shooting and yelling, ‘I'm gonna kill them all!’ He survived.”

Leroy remained in Vietnam until March of 1969.

According to Defoore, “Leroy's sudden death -- many of her closest friends didn't even know she was sick -- has left many unanswered questions, such as what will become of her vast collection of negatives…”

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