Eddie Adams
If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture.Collection: Photography
Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.Collection: Powerful
The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera.Collection: Cameras
Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. Words and pictures have a continuing struggle for primacy. In my mind, a person can write the best story in the world; but a photograph is absolute.Collection: Powerful
I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture - the threat, the interrogation. But it didn't happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC's head and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time. (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.)Collection: Men
I'm not a great believer in the power of the moving image. A still image has greater lasting power.Collection: Moving
Fear not a thousand accusing fingers, if you are right.Collection: Accusing
All that a Pulitzer really does is give the obit writers something to put between the commas after your name.Collection: Names
I was getting money for showing one man killing another. Two lives were destroyed and I was getting paid for it. (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.)Collection: Men