David Burnett (born 1946) is an American magazine

photojournalist Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...

based in Washington, D.C. His work from the 1979 Iranian revolution was published extensively in ''Time'' (including its "Man of the Year" portrait of the

Ayatollah Khomeini Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Imam Khomeini ( , ; ; 17 May 1900 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian political and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the founder of ...

). He has won dozens of top awards for his work, including the 1973 Robert Capa Gold Medal (with

Raymond Depardon Raymond Depardon (; born 6 July 1942) is a French photographer, photojournalist and documentary filmmaker. Early life Depardon was born in Villefranche-sur-Saône, France. Photographer Depardon is a mainly self-taught photographer, as he began ...

and

Chas Gerretsen Chas Gerretsen (born 22 July 1943 in Groningen, Netherlands) is a Dutch-born war photographer, photojournalist and film advertising photographer. His photographs of armed conflicts, Hollywood films and Celebrity Portraits have been published i ...

) from the Overseas Press Club for work in Chile, the 1980 Magazine Photographer of the Year from the

National Press Photographers Association The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) is an American professional association made up of still photographers, television videographers, editors, and students in the journalism field. Founded in 1946, the organization is based in at ...

, and the 1980 World Press Photo of the Year. He was a member of the

Gamma Gamma (uppercase , lowercase ; ''gámma'') is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop . In Modern Greek, this letter re ...

photo agency and co-founded

Contact Press Images Contact Press Images is an international and independent photojournalism agency founded in 1976 in New York City by French-British journalist and editor Robert Pledge and American photojournalist David Burnett. The agency's operations have been di ...

Early life and formative years

David Burnett was born in 1946, in Holladay, Utah. His parent are Mr. and Mrs. Ted Burnett. He attended Oakwood School, Olympus Junior High, and Olympus high school. During a summer job at optical store in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

he developed an interest for lenses, and his first published photos were in the yearbook of his high school. Burnett said that he knew he wanted to be a photographer from the experience working on the yearbook and that within a year or two he became a stringer for a local weekly and occasionally sold pictures of Friday night basketball to ''

The Salt Lake Tribune ''The Salt Lake Tribune'' is a newspaper published in the city of Salt Lake City, Utah. The ''Tribune'' is owned by The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc., a non-profit corporation. The newspaper's motto is "Utah's Independent Voice Since 1871." History ...

''.

Career

In 1968, after his graduation from the Colorado College, Burnett began working as a freelance photographer for ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' and ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

'', first in the United States and later in

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

. On June 8, 1972. Burnett was one of the photojournalists present at

Trảng Bàng Trảng Bàng is a town in Tây Ninh Province, in the Southeast region of Vietnam. It has a traditional artisan industry, and recently has opened an industrial zone for foreign investment. This town has a famous food called '' bánh canh Trản ...

in Tây Ninh Province when

Nick Ut Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut (born March 29, 1951), is a Vietnamese-American photographer who worked for the Associated Press (AP) in Los Angeles. He won both the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 W ...

of the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

captured his famous image of the nine-year-old Vietnamese girl

Phan Thị Kim Phúc Phan Thị Kim Phúc (; born April 6, 1963), referred to informally as the girl in the picture and the Napalm girl, is a South Vietnamese-born Canadian woman best known as the nine-year-old child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize–winning photog ...

and some other children fleeing a

napalm Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical (usually gasoline (petrol) or diesel fuel). The name is a portmanteau of two of the constituents of the original thickening and gelling agents: coprecipitated al ...

attack. Two South Vietnamese Skyraider aircraft went off course and dropped the incendiary bombs near the journalists, resulting in the deaths of two children and inflicting serious burns on others, including Kim Phúc. Burnett also photographed the scene. After two years in Vietnam, he joined the French photo agency

, traveling the world for its news department for two years. In 1975, he co-founded a new photo agency,

, in New York City. For the last three decades he has traveled extensively, working for most of the major magazines in the United States and Europe. In 2004, Burnett also used his Speed Graphic with a 178mm f/2.5

Aero-Ektar Thorium (90Th) has seven naturally occurring isotopes but none are stable. One isotope, 232Th, is ''relatively'' stable, with a half-life of 1.405×1010 years, considerably longer than the age of the Earth, and even slightly longer than the gen ...

lens removed from a K-24 aerial camera to cover the Presidential campaign of John Kerry. His work covering the

2004 Olympics The 2004 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 2004, ), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 28ης Ολυμπιάδας, ) and also known as Athens 2004 ( el, Αθήνα 2004), ...

with an array of antiquated cameras and films received positive reviews in the photography press and in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

.'' In 2009,

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly the ''National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is a popular American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely ...

published Burnett's ''44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World''. The books contains his photography taken in Iran during the 1979 overthrow of

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ( fa, محمدرضا پهلوی, ; 26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980), also known as Mohammad Reza Shah (), was the last ''Shah'' (King) of the Imperial State of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow in the Irani ...

. Also that year, Burnett published another book of intimate, unpublished images he took of reggae singer

Bob Marley Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981; baptised in 1980 as Berhane Selassie) was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, his musical career was marked by fusing elements o ...

, titled ''Soul Rebel.'' In 2019, the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of

Apollo 11 Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module ''Eagle'' on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, an ...

, the first manned mission to the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

, he published ''We Choose to Go to the Moon'', a book of photos taken around the launch pad in

Cape Canaveral , image = cape canaveral.jpg , image_size = 300 , caption = View of Cape Canaveral from space in 1991 , map = Florida#USA , map_width = 300 , type =Cape , map_caption = Location in Florida , location ...

. In October 2022,

The Outsiders House Museum The Outsiders House Museum is a museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, about Francis Ford Coppola's coming-of-age movie,'' The Outsiders'' (1983), and the 1967 novel by the same name it adapts by S. E. Hinton. It aims to preserve the house which served as t ...

and its executive director

Danny Boy O'Connor Daniel O'Connor (born December 12, 1968), better known as Danny Boy or Danny Boy O'Connor, is an American rapper, art director, and the executive director of The Outsiders House Museum. O'Connor spent his childhood in New York, before moving to ...

published the book ''The Outsiders ‘Rare and Unseen’'', which contains 148 photos by Burnett who was the on-set photographer of the film ''The Outsiders'' (1983). O'Connor said: “We originally got the first lot of photos and then urnettsaid there may be more. They found the rougher photos, and for me, that’s where the rubber meets the road because they’re unpolished, their guard’s down, they’re not posing".

Partial bibliography

2009 - ''44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World'' 2009 - ''Soul Rebel'' 2019 - ''We Choose to Go to the Moon'' 2022 - ''The Outsiders ‘Rare and Unseen’'' - with Danny Boy O'Connor

Accolades

1973 - Robert Capa Gold Medal - with Raymond Depardon and Chas Gerretsen 1980 - Magazine Photographer of the Year - National Press Photographers Association 1980 - World Press Photo of the Year

References

External links

*
Slide show and talk at ''The New York Times''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burnett, David American photojournalists American war photographers Vietnam War photographers 1946 births Living people