IN MEMORY OF EDDIE ADAMS

Albuquerque, NM -- Somehow, reading Eddie Adams' obituary made it all seem less real. How could his life be condensed so nicely, so contained in a column of text?

His death seemed more real in the words my friend Nicky Ut couldn't say during a phone call Sunday to tell me Eddie had just died in his sleep in New York City. He was 71. After being diagnosed less than a year ago with Lou Gehrig's disease, Eddie slid rapidly downhill in the last few months, losing his ability to walk, to talk. Eddie's name is always attached to the phrase "Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer." He covered countless wars, world crises, children in need, famines and even celebrities in his later years for Parade Magazine. But his life's work is often reduced to being the man who photographed the Viet Cong officer being shot point-blank in the head. It was a gritty, horrible moment that, without argument, helped change the perspective of the American war in Vietnam. Eddie hated that picture. He didn't like to talk about it; he didn't have it hanging in his New York home with all the other big glossy pictures from his life in photojournalism. That was what war was, he would say. He was friends with the general who fired the gun. He felt pain that his photojournalism career was built on that one single frame that destroyed the reputation and life of the general. Another famous picture from the war was the one Nicky took of a Vietnamese girl running, her arms flailing, after being burned by napalm. Eddie helped Nicky get a job at The Associated Press as a young photographer after Nicky's brother was killed in the war.
A mutual friend just told me how Eddie asked him to help write his biography without pictures. My friend couldn't understand how a photographer could - or would want to tell - his life's story in a book without pictures. I understand, though. For me, it wasn't the magic and power of the Viet Cong photograph or any others for that matter that made Eddie "Eddie." It was his heart, his passion, his energy. It was how he lived. He hired me in 1993 while I was still in graduate school as his lighting assistant to help him out on assignments shooting celebrities and other big names. I knew nothing about lights. I told him that. He didn't either. He just said, "Don't worry, kid." I remember one assignment, shooting cast members of "60 Minutes" out in the rural parts of upstate New York. We both got so excited about finding the right locations we somehow managed to forget a very expensive Hasselblad camera and lens set up on a tripod in the middle of the road. We drove off to find other places, and he looked over at me and said, "Where's the camera?" I said, "I thought you had it." He replied, "But you're the assistant." I said, "But you're the photographer." And he said, "You're fired."
Well, I wasn't. I continued hanging out with Eddie during his workshops for young photographers at his farm in upstate New York. I crashed on the spare bed at his New York studio for months when all I had in my pocket was nonconvertible currency from the Eastern bloc, a half-printed photo portfolio and a bunch of big dreams. But as for countless other people, Eddie was always there. Always full of big ideas, Eddie ran a workshop that for nearly two decades provided hundreds of young photographers with a tuition-free opportunity to spend time with him and the top photo editors in the country. Many of the photographs seen in papers and magazines today are taken by photographers who passed through Eddie's workshop, "Barnstorm."
He dragged the masters out of their retirements so the young folks could meet and know the likes of Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who captured the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. His workshop was as unorthodox as was his style with everything: He invited paparazzi, artists, novelists, even Gordon Parks - the renaissance man, the photographer, playwright, composer, director - so young photographers could see and feel the energy of a world of people devoted to their passions and to their art.
It wasn't just a "photography workshop." It was Eddie's workshop. Eddie was larger than life. He threw huge Halloween parties in downtown Manhattan, designed his own clothing line, was rarely spotted without his signature fedora, went duck hunting with Fidel Castro, had contact with a string of American presidents and with every celebrity in between. He went to every flea market in New York, dragging home old movie seats, statues of mermaids, old cars, a golf cart. He hated anything less than perfection; he was amazed how Irish oatmeal tasted so different from instant. He wouldn't tolerate disloyalty and laziness. He would cry if he'd see a child in pain.
After the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Eddie wouldn't go to the site. Despite all the wars and violence he had seen and photographed, he couldn't bring himself to see it in his own neighborhood. Despite being sick in the spring, Eddie made it to New Mexico for a photo project he had been working on. He made me promise I'd make it to one last workshop this year in October. I promised. He couldn't. I saw it in his eyes then, the not-wanting-to-quit. And I didn't think he would, not Eddie. Certain people just don't die.

Eddie was a pain to work for. He was magic. He was a frustrating perfectionist. He was a kid. He would curse cameras, bad light, bad service, bad editors. His energy was intoxicating. He hated being sick. He was - borrowing one of his favorite phrases - "a real piece of work." He never stopped. I still hear his laugh. And now I'm not yet sure how the world is supposed to be without Eddie.
by Stacia Spragg who is currently a staff photographer for the Albuquerque Tribune. She first joined the staff in 1996 as an intern after receiving her Master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1995. Prior to joining the Tribune's staff, she did personal projects on political and social events in Cuba, orphans of war and AIDS in Uganda, and a Gypsy community in Bulgaria while teaching visual communications at the American University in Bulgaria. Stacia is currently continuing a project she began nearly six years ago documenting a Navajo family and their experience saving their culture while saving a sacred and endangered sheep. She received a major grant from the Endowment for the Humanties to exhibit the work, which she hopes to eventually compile into a book.