Associated Press Photo Operations Head Hal Buell: ‘I had the greatest job in the whole world.’

 Via AP

January 31, 2024

Hal Buell, who led AP’s photo operations from darkroom era into the digital age, dies at 92

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (AP) — Hal Buell, who led The Associated Press’ photo operations from the darkroom era into the age of digital photography over a four-decade career with the news organization that included 12 Pulitzer Prizes and some of the defining images of the Vietnam War, has died. He was 92.

Buell died Monday in Sunnyvale, California, after battling pneumonia, his daughter Barbara Buell said in an email. His final two months were spent with her and her husband, and he died in their home with his daughter at his side.

“He was a great father, friend, mentor, and driver of important transitions in visual media during his long AP career,” Barbara Buell said. “When asked by the numerous doctors, PT, and medical personnel he met over the last six months what he had done during his working life, he always said the same thing: ‘I had the greatest job in the whole world.’”

Colleagues described Buell as a visionary who encouraged photographers to try new ways of covering hard news. As the editor in charge of AP’s photo operations from the late 1960s to the 1990s, he supervised a staff that won a dozen Pulitzers on his watch and he worked in 33 countries, with legendary AP photographers including Eddie Adams, Horst Faas and Nick Ut.

FILE - South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a suspected Viet Cong officer with a single pistol shot in the head in Saigon, Vietnam, Feb. 1, 1968. The image won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams, File)

“Hal pushed us an extra step,” Adams said in an internal AP newsletter at the time of Buell’s retirement in 1997. “The AP had always been cautious, or seemed to be, about covering hard news. But that was the very thing Buell encouraged.”

Buell made the crucial decision in 1972 to run Ut’s photo of a naked young girl fleeing her burning village after napalm was dropped on it by South Vietnamese Air Force aircraft. The image of Kim Phuc became one of the most haunting images of the Vietnam War and came to define for many all that was misguided about the war.

After the image was transmitted from Saigon to AP headquarters in New York, Buell examined it closely and discussed it with other editors for about 10 minutes before deciding to run it.

FILE - In this June 8, 1972, file photo taken by Huynh Cong “Nick” Ut, South Vietnamese forces follow behind terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places. The image won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography. He was 92. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

“We didn’t have any objection to the picture because it was not prurient. Yes, nudity but not prurient in any sense of the word,” Buell said in a 2016 interview. “It was the horror of war. It was innocence caught in the crossfire, and it went right out, and of course it became a lasting icon of that war, of any war, of all wars.”

Ut was just 20 when he made the iconic photo that won him the Pulitzer Prize. Without Buell’s support, he said, the photo might never had become a symbol of the war.

“He thought it was powerful, and he wanted to get it out right away,” Ut said by phone Tuesday.

He said he last spoke several weeks ago with Buell, who he called a mentor and a great friend.

“Hal was the best boss I ever had,” Ut said. “He was very supportive of me.”

Santiago Lyon, a former vice president and director of photography at AP, called Buell “a giant in the field of news agency photojournalism.”

David Ake, who recently retired as AP’s director of photography, said Buell set the standard for that role.

“I can’t tell you the number of times I would get a pearl of ‘Hal wisdom’ from one staffer or another,” Ake said. “He will be missed both in the AP and by the entire photojournalism community.”

Buell joined the AP in the Tokyo bureau on a part-time basis after graduating from Northwestern University in 1954 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism. He was serving with the Army at the time, working on the military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

Out of the Army two years later, he joined AP’s Chicago bureau as a radio writer, and a year later, in 1957, was promoted to the photo desk in AP’s New York office.

Buell returned to Tokyo at the end of the decade to be supervisory photo editor for Asia and came back to New York in 1963 to be AP’s photo projects editor. He became executive news photo editor in 1968 and in 1977 he was named assistant general manager for news photos.

During his decades with AP, technology in news photography took astonishing leaps, going from six hours to six minutes to snap, process and transmit a color photo. Buell implemented the transition from a chemical darkroom where film was developed to digital transmission and digital news cameras. He also helped create AP’s digital photo archive in 1997.

“In the ‘80s, when we went from black-and-white to all color, we were doing a good job to send two or three color pictures a day. Now we send 300,” Buell said in the 1997 AP newsletter.

Former AP CEO Lou Boccardi said in a statement that Buell drove this remarkable period of innovation and transition, but he never forgot, nor did he let his staff forget, that capturing “the” image that told the story was where it all had to start.

“Fortunately for us, and for news photography, his vision and energy empowered and inspired AP Photos for decades,” Boccardi said.

After retiring in 1997, Buell wrote books about photography, including “From Hell to Hollywood: The Incredible Journey of AP Photographer Nick Ut;" “Uncommon Valor, Common Virtue: Iwo Jima and the Photograph That Captured America;” and “The Kennedy Brothers: A Legacy in Photographs.” He was the author of more than a dozen other books, produced film documentaries for the History Channel and lectured across the United States.

“In the ‘80s, when we went from black-and-white to all color, we were doing a good job to send two or three color pictures a day. Now we send 300,” Buell said in the 1997 AP newsletter.

Former AP CEO Lou Boccardi said in a statement that Buell drove this remarkable period of innovation and transition, but he never forgot, nor did he let his staff forget, that capturing “the” image that told the story was where it all had to start.

“Fortunately for us, and for news photography, his vision and energy empowered and inspired AP Photos for decades,” Boccardi said.

After retiring in 1997, Buell wrote books about photography, including “From Hell to Hollywood: The Incredible Journey of AP Photographer Nick Ut;" “Uncommon Valor, Common Virtue: Iwo Jima and the Photograph That Captured America;” and “The Kennedy Brothers: A Legacy in Photographs.” He was the author of more than a dozen other books, produced film documentaries for the History Channel and lectured across the United States.

FILE 

Barbara Mullen, Model whose versatility enabled her to sustain a career across three decades

Tony Vaccaro: Barbara Mullen, New York, 1951

Via The Guardian

October 10, 2020

The 1950s, a golden period for fashion photography, introduced the world to names such as Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman and William Klein. On the other side of the camera, a generation of models was emerging – women who were well-paid and continually photographed, and yet (unlike their counterparts of later decades) remained largely anonymous outside fashion circles. None perhaps more so than the American Barbara Mullen, who has died aged 96.

Monroe Gallery of Photography sadly announces Tony Vaccaro has died at age 100

 

Tony Vaccaro toasts visitors at his NYC Pop Up Exhibition, December 16, 2022

Long Island City, NY -- Tony Vaccaro passed away peacefully on December 28, eight days after celebrating his 100th birthday. He was surrounded by his loving family: his son, Frank, daughter-in-law Maria, and beloved grandsons Liam and Luke. He is also survived by another son, David. Tony's wife, the former Marrimekko model Anja Vaccaro, passed away in 2013.

In late November, Tony had entered NY Harbor Veteran’s Hospital for emergency surgery for complications from an ulcer. He recovered and attended the pop-up Tony Vaccaro Centennial Exhibition of his photographs presented by Monroe Gallery of Photography in New York City December 13-18, 2022. The City of New York officially proclaimed December 20, 2022 “Tony Vaccaro Day”, and Vaccaro was feted by friends at a surprise birthday party at his favorite local Italian restaurant that evening.

Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, on December 20, 1922, Michelantonio Celestino Onofrio Vaccaro spent the first years of his life in the village of Bonefro, Italy, after his family left America under threat from the Mafia. Both of his parents had died by the time he was eight years old, and he was raised by an uncaring aunt and a brutal uncle. His love of photography began in Bonefro where at age ten, he began taking pictures with a box camera. When World War II broke out, the American ambassador in Rome ordered Vaccaro to return to the States. He settled in with his sisters in New Rochelle, N.Y., where he joined his high school camera club. His teacher and mentor Bertram Lewis guided him through a year of concentrated apprenticeship.

 A year later, at the age of 21, Vaccaro was drafted into the war. He was determined to photograph the war, and had his portable 35mm Argus C-3 with him from the start. By the spring of 1944 he was photographing war games in Wales. By June, now a combat infantryman in the 83rd Infantry Division, he was on a boat heading toward Omaha Beach. Tony's D-Day craft launched on D-Day, June 6th, and was staged in the channel to land June 28 (D-Day +12). For the next 272 days, Vaccaro fought and photographed on the front lines of the war. He entered Germany in December 1944, as a private in the Intelligence Platoon, and was tasked with going behind enemy lines at night. In the years after the war, he remained in Germany to photograph the rebuilding of the country for Stars and Stripes magazine. Vaccaro was awarded the Purple Heart medal for wounds received in action in the European Theater.

 Returning to the States in 1950, Vacaro started his career as a commercial photographer, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Flair, Life, Look, Harper’s Bazaar, Quick, Newsweek, Town and Country, Venture, and many more. . After the war, he replaced the searing images of horror embedded in his memory, by focusing on the splendor of life and capturing the beauty of fashion and those who gave of themselves: artists, writers, movie stars, and cultural figures. Tony went on to become one the most sought-after photographers of his day, photographing everyone from Enzo Ferrari and Sophia Loren to Pablo Picasso, Peggy Guggenheim and Frank Lloyd Wright. From 1970 to 1980 he taught photography at Cooper Union.

 “Il Maestro,” as the Italian press called him, won numerous honors and awards. These include the Art Director’s Gold Medal (New York City, 1963), The World Press Photo Gold Medal (The Hague, 1969), The Legion of Honor (Paris, 1994), The Medal of Honor (Luxembourg, 2002), Das Verdienstkreuz (Berlin, 2004), and the Minerva d’Oro (Pescara, 2014).

 

Since retiring in 1982, Vaccaro’s work has been exhibited world-wide over 250 times and has been published or been the subject of ten books and two major films. In 2014, the Museo Foto Tony Vaccaro was inaugurated in Bonefro, Italy.

 Vaccaro’s works are in numerous private and public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

 In 2016, HBO Films premiered Under Fire: The Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro. The film tells the story of how he survived the war, fighting the enemy while also documenting his experience at great risk, developing his photos in combat helmets at night and hanging the negatives from tree branches. The film also encompasses a wide range of contemporary issues regarding combat photography such as the ethical challenges of witnessing and recording conflict, the ways in which combat photography helps to define how wars are perceived by the public, and the sheer difficulty of staying alive while taking photos in a war zone. The film led to a career renaissance for Vaccaro.

 In 2018, Vaccaro’s photographs were featured in major one-person exhibitions in Venezia, Italy; Potsdam, Germany; London, England; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2019, he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in St. Louis, Mo. In 2021 the Kunsthalle Helsinki presented the exhibition Tony Vaccaro: Life Is Wonderful, a selection of 130 images from his career of nearly 80 years. From October 10 – December 4, 2022, Tony Vaccaro 100!  was exhibited at the Museum für Photographie in Braunschweig, Germany.

After surviving World War II, Vacarro recovered from two bouts with Covid-19 in 2020 and 2022. He attributed his longevity to “blind luck, determination, red wine, and chocolate”.

The New York pop-up exhibition featured the premiere showing of the trailer for the new documentary film “VACCARO BY LA VILLA” by acclaimed and award winning filmmakers, Marco and Mauro La Villa. The film tells the ‘Come-Back’ story of an extraordinary photographer, artist, and orphan that was almost forgotten and not nearly given the much deserved due and recognition for a lifetime of extraordinary work.

Filmed over the last 5 years of Tony Vaccaro’s life, “VACCARO BY LA VILLA” is scheduled for release in 2023.

PHOTOGRAPHER STEVE SCHAPIRO DIES AT 87

 

Steve Schapiro in Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe

Photograph by ©R. David Marks

January 16, 2022

Prolific photographer Steve Schapiro covered major historical events and captured seminal moments of the American Civil Rights Movement

Santa Fe, NM--Steve Schapiro died peacefully on January 15 surrounded by his wife, Maura Smith, and son, Theophilus Donoghue in Chicago, Illinois after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 87.

Steve Schapiro discovered photography at the age of nine at summer camp. Excited by the camera’s potential, Schapiro spent the next decades prowling the streets of his native New York City trying to emulate the work of French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, whom he greatly admired. His first formal education in photography came when he studied under the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith. Smith’s influence on Schapiro was far-reaching. He taught him the technical skills he needed to succeed as a photographer but also informed his personal outlook and worldview. Schapiro’s lifelong interest in social documentary and his consistently empathetic portrayal of his subjects is an outgrowth of his days spent with Smith and the development of a concerned humanistic approach to photography.

Beginning in 1961, Schapiro worked as a freelance photojournalist. His photographs appeared internationally in the pages and on the covers of magazines, including Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, People and Paris Match. During the decade of the 1960s in America, called the “golden age in photojournalism,” Schapiro produced photo-essays on subjects as varied as narcotics addition, Easter in Harlem, the Apollo Theater, Haight-Ashbury, political protest, the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, poodles and presidents. A particularly poignant story about the lives of migrant workers in Arkansas, produced in 1961 for Jubilee and picked up by the New York Times Magazine, both informed readers about the migrant workers’ difficult living conditions and brought about tangible change—the installation of electricity in their camps.

©Steve Schapiro: Migrant Bean Pickers, Arkansas, 1961

An activist as well as documentarian, Schapiro covered many stories related to the Civil Rights movement, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the push for voter registration and the Selma to Montgomery march. Called by Life to Memphis after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Schapiro produced some of the most iconic images of that tragic event.

©Steve Schapiro

Martin Luther King Marching for Voting Rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas, James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, 1965

In the 1970s, as picture magazines like Look folded, Schapiro shifted attention to film. With major motion picture companies as his clients, Schapiro produced advertising materials, publicity stills, and posters for films as varied as The Godfather, The Way We Were, Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy, Rambo, Risky Business, and Billy Madison. He also collaborated on projects with musicians, such as Barbra Streisand and David Bowie, for record covers and related art.

Schapiro’s photographs have been widely reproduced in magazines and books related to American cultural history from the 1960s forward, civil rights, and motion picture film. Monographs of Schapiro’s work include American Edge (2000); a book about the spirit of the turbulent decade of the 1960s in America, and Schapiro’s Heroes (2007), which offers long intimate profiles of ten iconic figures: Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Ray Charles, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Barbra Streisand and Truman Capote. Schapiro’s Heroes was the winner of an Art Directors Club Cube Award. Taschen released The Godfather Family Album: Photographs by Steve Schapiro in 2008, followed by Taxi Driver (2010), both initially in signed limited editions. This was followed by Then And Now (2012), Bliss about the changing hippie generation (2015), BOWIE (2016),

Misericordia (2016) an amazing facility for people with developmental problems, and in 2017 books about Muhammad Ali and Taschen’s Lucie award-winning The Fire Next Time with James Baldwin’s text and Schapiro’s Civil Rights photos from 1963 to 1968. At the time of his death, Schapiro was working on a book of his photographs of Andy Warhol (Taschen) and a book pairing his photographs alongside his son Theophilus’s photography.

Since the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s seminal 1969 exhibition, Harlem on my Mind, which included a number of his images, Schapiro’s photographs have appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions world-wide. The High Museum of Art’s Road to Freedom, which traveled widely in the United States, includes numerous of his photographs from the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. Recent one-man shows have been mounted in Los Angeles, London, Santa Fe, Amsterdam, Paris. And Berlin. Steve has had large museum retrospective exhibitions in the United States, Spain, Russia, and Germany.

Schapiro continued to work in a documentary vein. His recent series of photographs have been about India, music festivals, the Christian social activist Shane Claiborne, and Black Lives Matter.

In 2017, Schapiro won the Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. Schapiro’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Museum, the High Museum of Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum, and the Getty Museum.

Steve is survived by his wife Maura Smith, his sons Theophilus Donoghue and Adam Schapiro, and his daughters Elle Harvey and Taylor Schapiro. 

Rest in power.

Lucien Clergue (1934 - 2014)

Photo via anneclergue.com

The New York Times: Lucien Clergue, Master and Promoter of Art Photography, Dies at 80
The Guardian: Lucien Clergue obituary



l'Oeil de la Photographie: Lucien Clergue's funeral

The Telegraph: Lucien Clergue was a photographer known for his friendship with Picasso and his images of bullfighting and nudes

HyperAllergic: Remembering French Photographer Lucien Clergue, a Giant of the Field

ArtNet News: Photography Legend Lucien Clergue Dead at 80


artlyst: Lucien Clergue French Photographer And Life-Long Friend Of Picasso Has Died

SBS: French photographer and Picasso confidant Lucien Clergue dies aged 80

l’Oeil de la photographie: Lucien Clergue is dead (1934-2014)

Artforum: Lucien Clergue (1934–2014)

BILL EPPRIDGE - 1938 - 2013 - AN AMERICAN TREASURE

 

Bill Eppridge, Santa Fe, 2009

Photo by David Marks


"What a sad day for photography when we loose Bill Eppridge" --Bob Gomel


The New YorkTimes: Bill Eppridge, Who Captured Powerful ’60s Images, Dies at 75

The Baltimore Sun: Remembering photographer Bill Eppridge

The Globe and Mail: Photographer Bill Eppridge: an eyewitness to moments in history

RFK Center:  Deepest Condolences on the Passing of Bill Eppridge

Missouri School of Journalism: Remembering Bill Eppridge

Sports Illustrated: Tribute to Photographer Bill Eppridge

New York Times Lens: The Moment a Photographer Became a Historian

BBC: Bill Eppridge, US photojournalist who captured Robert Kennedy assassination, dies

The Los Angeles Times: Bill Eppridge dies at 75; took famed photo of RFK after shooting

Time LightBox: In Memoriam: Iconic LIFE Photographer Bill Eppridge (1938-2013)

CBS News: Bill Eppridge, photographer at RFK assassination, dies;
In this 2008 interview, he talks about the moment Kennedy was shot.

BBC: Bill Eppridge, US photojournalist who captured Robert Kennedy assassination, dies

National Press Photographers Association: Life Magazine Legend Bill Eppridge, 75

Herald Scotland: "Bill Eppridge was a photojournalist who took what is considered to be one of the greatest news pictures of all time"

Associated Press: Photographer at RFK assassination dies in Conn

PDN: Obituary: Photographer Bill Eppridge, LIFE Photographer, Sixties Chronicler, Age 75

NPR: Bill Eppridge, Photographer Who Captured RFK's Death, Dies at 75

 

ABC News: Bill Eppridge, Legendary RFK Photographer, Dies

"The world mourns one of the finest and most iconic photographers of our time."

Washington Post: Photographer Bill Eppridge, who captured images of mortally wounded RFK, dies in Conn. at 75

Washington Post National: Bill Eppridge, Life magazine photographer, dies at 75

CNN: Photographer Bill Eppridge

CNN: Photos: People we lost in 2013

AFP: Photographer who captured Robert Kennedy assassination dies

NPPA: Life Magazine Legend Bill Eppridge, 75

Danbury News-Times:  Bill Eppridge, iconic New Milford photographer, dead at 75

Stanford Advocate Slideshow:  The iconic images of Bill Eppridge

Mass Live/The Republican: LIFE magazine photographer Bill Eppridge dead at 75
 

Elizabeth Avedon: BILL EPPRIDGE: 1938-2013

From his first college newspaper, University of Toronto's The Varsity:
Pages from the Past: Bill Eppridge

"The man could shoot anything. And he did. Goodbye, Bill. And thanks."

THE HISTORIC MASTER VINTAGE PRINT OF ROBERT KENNEDY SHOT

 

Bill Eppridge was one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and  captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career - the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. His most recent project was to record the disappearance of the American Family Farm and he was as passionate about this subject as he was any other.
 

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Bill Eppridge's visual contribution to American History. A recent retrospective of his work at Monroe gallery was titled: “Bill Eppridge: An American Treasure”. He was indeed a treasure, and he is already missed.  --Sidney and Michelle Monroe

Bill Eppridge is a sobering reminder of the necessity of a common history to a civilized society.

 

 

Reposted from Bill Eppridge's good friend Dave Burnett.

It's hard to write or even to read the words about the passing of Bill Eppridge. A little older than I was, to me and my generation (the late sixty somethings) Bill was always one of those guys to whom we could point and realize that THIS GUY was the photo journalist you wanted to be. Tough, dedicated, a rare sense of humor, willing to share and guide (he once gave me one of the kindest beratings over some pictures I had in a round-up piece to which LIFE had assigned both of us..) it was never snarky, since he didn't need to be snarky about anything. Even when he was dealt a lousy hand with health issues, he kept motoring ahead, and was never, ever, without a Nikon of some sort to catch that inevitable fleeting moment. I only once got to share a fishing line with him, in Thomas Mangelsen's back yard. He kept trying to show me how to throw the line in so that some clueless fish might forget ...to reject me. I have a feeling that the 'fishing Bill' was a whole different side of him, and sorry I missed it. He and Adrienne were a great couple. The last time we hung with them was in NY when Bill, Melanie Burford and I judged the N Y Press photographers contest a year and a half ago. It was a blast to see what was, and wasn't acceptable to Bill. He had high standards for his craft, and was probably tougher on himself than anyone else. Bill had one of those great grins: it was somewhere between shit-eating and cat swallowing canary. In fact it might have even been canary swallows cat. It was as if there was always one more story to tell, and he'd just heard the punch line, and wanted to be the one to share it. I'm sorry we won't have him around to tell some of those stories. He was a master at it in all ways.



Obituary: Goksin Sipahioglu: Acclaimed photojournalist and Founder of Sipa Agency

 

AP Photo

Via The Independant

Goksin Sipahioglu: Acclaimed photojournalist who went on to found the Sipa agency

By Phil Davison
Saturday, 8 October 2011

Himself a daring frontline photojournalist from the 1950s onwards, Göksin Sipa-hioglu founded the Paris-based Sipa photo agency, which went on to become one of the most respected and most successful in the world.

Following in the footsteps of the great Magnum co-operative, which had been launched in both Paris and New York after the Second World War, Sipa attracted some of the best photographers and photojournalists from around the globe, perhaps best-known for their coverage of wars, disasters and other major stories.

Having spent most of his life in Paris, Sipahioglu was dubbed "le Grand Turc" by the French media. He launched or accelerated the careers of some of the greatest photojournalists and war photographers of recent years including the Iranians Abbas (Attar) and Reza (Deghati) and the Frenchmen Luc Delahaye and Patrick Chauvel. "He managed Sipa as a father," the agency said, announcing his death.

Sipa, still providing many of the photos we see in our papers, TV screens and online every day, was one of three Paris-based agencies – along with Gamma and Sygma – that dominated world photojournalism from the 1970s until the digital revolution allowed freelancers to transmit and sell directly to media outlets. In those pre-digital days, photographers would send their rolls of film via international courier services – or sometimes by persuading or paying an airline passenger to "pigeon" their film to someone from their agency, who would pick them up at the arrival gate.

During his own career behind the lens, initially for Turkish newspapers, Sipahioglu was one of the few "western" reporters or photographers in Havana during the 1962 missile crisis. With President Kennedy poised to take out Soviet missiles on Cuba, Havana was not high on the list of places to be for normal foreigners. But Sipahioglu stayed, and conveyed to the world much of the tension of the time, famously capturing a young, armed civilian girl protecting a Havana bank on behalf of her revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. That and many of his other images of the crisis appeared on the front pages of countless US newspapers.

Six years later, in 1968, juggling wide-angle and zoom lenses and going through dozens of rolls of film, he was one of those photographers in between riot police and student and other protesters in the streets of his adopted Paris. His photo of a well-dressed woman in high heels, pleading to riot police amid exploding tear gas canisters on the Place Mabillon, became one of the enduring images of the uprising. Another showed a girl student sticking a flower in the hat of a wary policeman. He went on to work for two of the major international photo agencies, Black Star and Gamma.

Sent to Munich in 1972 to cover the Olympics, Sipahioglu found himself visually chronicling the Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes and its bloody outcome. His international recognition for those pictures led him to launch Sipa the following year along with his girlfriend, the American journalist Phyllis Springer (whom he would marry almost 30 years later). They started out in a tiny office on the Champs-Elysées.

Göksin Sipahioglu was born in Izmir, Turkey, in 1926. After attending the French Lycée St Joseph in Istanbul he helped found the Kadiköy Sports Club, now best known for the Efes Pilsen basketball team. He later studied journalism at Istanbul University. After making a name for himself in Turkey as a photographer, he received international recognition for his 1956 photos of wounded Egyptian soldiers after Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula during the Suez crisis.

He sold Sipa in 2001 to France's Sud Communication group, owned by the industrialist Pierre Fabre, although he stayed on as chairman until he retired in 2003. In January 2007, then French president Jacques Chirac appointed him Knight of the Legion of Honour.

"Sipahioglu was the greatest photojournalist ever," the French photojournalist Jean-Francois Leroy told the British Journal of Photography. "He helped so many photographers ... giving them their first assignments. He had a unique position in this industry. He was a giant."

Göksin Sipahioglu, photojournalist and agency founder: born Izmir, Turkey 28 December 1926; married 2002 Phyllis Springer; died Paris 5 October 2011.