Philip Jones Griffiths 1936-2008

Philip Jones Griffith... it is an unmeasurable loss for world's photography....

Comment posted by Marcin Luczkowski on March 19, 2008

The world he lived in, the world he captured and now the world will always remember him.

Comment posted by Alok Johri on March 19, 2008

Very sad loss, RIP Philip!

Comment posted by Daniel on March 19, 2008

very very sad.I only had the pleasure of meeting Philip recently he was obviously ill but was full of humour and wisdom.my sympathy to his family and friends

Comment posted by JEFF MOORE on March 19, 2008

A wonderful man and a compassionate photographer. He left his mark and taught us how to see.
RIP Mr Griffiths and my deepest condolences to his family and friends.

Comment posted by Edmond Terakopian on March 19, 2008

Philip is gone ! I am crushed about this sad news. I tried to speak to him when we learned that his last days were counted four months ago, but to no avail. I was not able to give him a small encouragement or an ultimate farewell sign from me and Bill Tuohy, Nik and Adam Wheeler who have embraced him into our families since the Vietnam War. He has been a towering photographer and a formidable fighter against cancer.

It has been a privilege to have him as President of Magnum Photos when I worked for the agency in New York as editorial director in the early 80s.

Please extend our condoleances from our families in Los Angeles to Fanny, Katherine, Donna and Heather.

Rose Marie Wheeler- Tuohy

Comment posted by Rose Marie Wheeler-Tuohy on March 19, 2008

thanks for what you left to us, truth photojournalism, something to learn from especially from the deep ethical sense in the photos. My deepest condolences

Comment posted by Daniele Mattioli on March 19, 2008

Of the photojournalist I truly admire, Phillip's photos were truly remarkable. He left an indelible mark on the history of photography, the history of the world and most importantly, the history of man.

You will be missed.

"Fair winds and following seas"

Comment posted by Paul Conrad on March 19, 2008

Thank you, Sir.

My thoughts go to his family and friends.
RIP.

Armando

Comment posted by Armando Ribeiro on March 20, 2008

I was very saddened to learn today of the death of Philip Jones Griffiths. I discovered his work early on as I became interested in photography, and it showed me for the first time the shatteringly profound effect that images could have when thoughtfully compiled and sequenced. I think that anyone that saw his work had their views towards war and warriors permanently changed. His work was a big part of the reason that I began covering war, and I hope he can rest in peace knowing that there are a great many dedicated photographers eager to carry on his legacy. My deepest condolences to his family.

Comment posted by Peter van Agtmael on March 20, 2008

Good on you Philip. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and spirit.

Comment posted by Ted Engelmann on March 20, 2008

forgive my long post for this blog...and forgive my poort post....i havent';t gone back and re-written?re-red-edited /re-editenc, properly...
---------------------------

"Dyfal donc a dyr y garreg."

"Tapping persistently breaks the stone."
--Welsh Proverb

I.

Tonight, I have been drinking and I am bereft.

Philip Jones Griffiths has died.

I cannot begin to explain or enumerate the loss that this entails. I miss him as if I miss my father, broken. Though I have never spoken to him, face to face, I grieve for him. Is this not the measure and weight that he has been given to our often-atrophied life? How to straighten the clawed forearms of a heart if not by breaking the pinched-shell of an outer reluctance. Did he not accomplish this within the foreshadowing of all that he photographed

Is it possible to tell his children how eloquently he bequeathed something that is more long-lasting that what we often bargain for: a photograph, a line, a story, a shadow as howl, a moment as assimilation, a broken body, a scar over flight, a picture not as metaphor but as testament. The world is bereft and we, shuttling back and forth like addled ghosts, try to make sense of all that surrounds.

Philip Jones Griffiths has died and I feel impoverished by his death. This may sound ineloquent but it is neither exaggeration nor histrionic. He was an extraordinary photographer, an extraordinary writer and an extraordinary human being, I know, I am speaking as if a grandiose orator, but can I suggest that our lives are less lost from that which he has been accomplished. Is this not his contribution? Creation or surprise, though the particular, is this not the legacy? Jones Griffiths' allowed and negotiated our sense of the cadaverous world. What greater bravery can be asked of a person?

Let me be more succinct: the time of childhood. Jones Griffith helped me from the time I was a 16-year old. He made sense of the incomprehensible. I would not be the person I am without him. Is this too grandiose? Okay, let me speak simpler. He was also one of my heroes? Is it possible to speak, still, of these kinds of things? All this.

All this day, I have tried to think and swallow, to allow for that which was washing up with that which was falling away: tears in the middle of a lecture; conversations with my wife and son; a phone call with my angry brother; a woman, sitting alone on a bench in dripping Toronto, crying, a book unarmed, a name forgotten, a subway token picked up on a cafe stair, a ring looked at and not bought, a quiver at the sight of a face, all this in one day, all this and the centrifugal force of his exit. Many will speak of what he meant to all of us, so I want to briefly speak about what he meant to me privately.

Tonight, I wonder and am exhausted.

His work and his life taught us to speak upon things. For me, I spoke to him often in my head, beginning the moment as a 16-year old I opened a book about Vietnam that my father had given me and was first cold-cocked by photograph of "Little Tiger" only to be confronted by a photograph of a brother howling at the loss of his sister who lay beneath him along the stomach a truck's bed, a howl that even know speaks of resuscitation and forbearance.. That boy (then as well as now) looked like my brother and I wept imagining that that photograph was of my brother : the sister the one I always dreamed of. Even now, writing about this more than 25 years later, i ache from that which we lost so tremendously. This was Philip's hard offering to us: to speak of that which we took for granted and that which we did not speak up enough to defend.

Into the world, as if to resuscitate the dead, and then the photos: of the brother looking at his sister in the back of the pickup truck: all is contained in that moment, all.

Christ, words exhaust.

II

Tonight, within the country of this cool and damp and soft-settling evening, I am at a loss to express how below my feet I sense the world's pivot slightly off-kilter. Tonight, I not only mourn his death but more selfishly I mourn the temporary loss of my own navigation. Like many others, I grew, even during this time when slaughter and destruction and cynical political gerrymandering seems to be the inevitability bequeath to us, to rely upon the undiminishing fact that with Jones Griffith alive the world stood a chance, a better chance to make right of what it had so egregiously wronged: that his presence somewhere on this gravely planet represented commitment and goodness and a depth of moral and spiritual mindfulness and temerity that no matter the amount of death and cynicism and blindness may shape-shift the world that steadied human valour and speech would prevail. He represented all that is brave and honest and good about our broken, misguided and forlorn species. All that is good and committed. He broke more than stones. He transfigured nations.

Until the end, he spoke and spoke without diminishment. Against the klaxon yelp of depravity, his voice was a buoys' bell. Tonight, . The night is extraordinarily silent this evening. I can hear the howl in my skull.

Wearied, let me now stoop to narcissistic sentimentality. He was, uncategoricaly, one of my heros. Philip Jones Griffiths was a towering beacon of light, a wave of impassioned, righteous, moral music in a world drowned by its own deafness. He was one of the 36 jewels that help the Earth in its equilibrium. He may not have even understood the importance of his responsibility, but by God, he lived it and that was clear.

Tonight, the spin of the Earth is a major key short in its song. For me, Philip Jones Griffiths was a Lamed Vav Tzadikim. For those not familiar with these Righteous Ones, let me offer a brief explanation. The Tzadikim Nistarim, Lamed Vav Tzadikim (ל"ו צדיקים) (often abbreviated as "the Lamed Vavniks ) refers to 36 Righteous people, a notion rooted within mystical Judaism. According to the Talmud, the world is kept in balance by these 36 righteous ones, human jewels that keep the world's clock knocking and tocking, their chime forestalling the apocalypse. From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadikim_Nistarim):

"Their purpose: Mystical Hasidic Judaism as well as other segments of Judaism know that there is the Jewish tradition of 36 righteous people whose role in life is to justify the purpose of mankind in the eyes of God; their identity is unknown to each other; if one of them comes to a realization of his true purpose then he may die and his role is immediately assumed by another person..... In our folk tales, they emerge from their self-imposed concealment and, by the mystic powers, which they possess, they succeed in averting the threatened disasters of a people persecuted by the enemies that surround them. ... The lamed-vavniks do not themselves know that they are one of the 36... Since the 36 are each exemplars of anavah, ("humility"), having such a virtue would preclude against one’s self-proclamation of being among the special righteous...These holy people are hidden. According to some versions of the story, they themselves may not know who they are. For the sake of these 36 hidden saints, God preserves the world even if the rest of humanity has degenerated to the level of total barbarism......."

For many of us, Philip Jones Griffith preserved for us and embodied for us what is still yet remarkable about humans, even amid the mud and slaughter of our barbarism. He represented for me, first as a young teenager struggling with the meaning of what Vietnam meant to my father and his father's friends and country and later, as a young man, what it meant to pursue regardless of the world around, the effort to speak about that which most were still too afraid to speak upon,.

To do that which is often maligned and to do that which is misunderstood.

To make someting which speaks about that which is a part of all of us.

III.

Now, tonight.

Tonight, I do not grieve. I am thankful that Philip Jones Griffith was among us. He fed our lives. He opened our eyes. He, more than any other photographer I know, taught us that unwavering commitment, moral outrage, belief in the responsibility of acting upon that short and cowlick part of ourselves..

Without him, our lives would have been even more bereft: reminding that we, who can afford or who are able, should speak of and of those whose stories are often not told.

Alas, have not written this with an eye to remembrance but with an abandon that which has dug along the line of my own inadequate thoughts.

Philip Jones Griffith has died and I wish to share to share a fifth of whiskey or a bowl of skin-tickleded weed or a small page of of image with him. Maybe we would have never agreed, drunk, stoned, sober and articulate, or disagreed, but what I lament is that his passing reduces that conversation. How mchjc would have loved to chat. believe is that had i been priviledleged enough, I would have relished the moments I spent with him.

We care out wha† it is that we are bequeathed. We speak of that which we do not understand but to which we are committed.

I am saddened and yet, let me be improbable, let me be considerate, let me sway:

Philip, you shall be remembered, cherished and received: for your work lives. Your reconciliation and you remark, balance and amid the opositino of al thigns, the assurance of that which you have seend.

What else is there.

I am thankful for this small gesture, that manifest itself in such a heroic and
magnificent way.

Our loss, is nothing to your loss: my condolences and thoughts go out to his family, daughters, friends and colleagues…

Gone.

All.

My condolences and thoughts go out to his family, daughters, friends and colleague, including Fanny Ferrato, Katherine Holden, Donna Ferrato and Heather Holden amid all the brothers and sisters at Magnum.

He has bestowed us with now only legacy but with fervour. What else can one accomlishp

Sincerely,
Bob Black

Comment posted by Bob Black on March 20, 2008

With respect to a great photographer and humanist, who brought to us all the follies of war and it's consequences for those innocents caught up in the injustice of conflict. He has left a geat impression upon a whole generation of photographers whose concerns around the human condition stemmed from seeing his work. The likes of Phillip Jones Griffiths are only felt once in a lifetime. Thanks from us all for your inspiration and for helping us to see. R.I.P.
(Doc Photo-Newport).

Comment posted by clive on March 20, 2008

The passing and transition of Philip Jones Griffith, came to me yesterday, through David Alan Harvey, and his blog. Reading his post, I felt lost for words, and empty and hollow inside. I have seen some of his images before, but did not know much of him, until the Aperture interview was posted one day earlier, and people through the DAH blog talked about him. I also felt I got to know PJ Griffith more through the Aperture slideshow, reading the interview, and watching the Magnum In Motion. This all told a story of a great man and photographer, who is a true inspiration, and will be missed.

My condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.

Peace,
jarle

Comment posted by Jarle Kavli Jørgensen on March 20, 2008

He, through his words and his work, reminded me time and again that 'war photojournalism' was never just about the combat, or the toys used to execute it, but about the human lives that were inevitably caught up in it (military, civilian) and torn apart because of it. It was always about producing work that asked the hard questions, that forced us to see through the veil that the governments inevitably attempted to place over our minds.

His passing not only leaves me with an emptiness, but with this question; are we, this new generation of photographers, capable of carrying on his legacy? Will he be the last of his kind, or will we finally be able to pay him our greatest tribute, and bring something of his voice, and his values, to our own work?

Will he live on through us?

Rest In Peace Philip.

InallilLahe Wa Inna Ilayhe Rajeoun

Asim Rafiqui

Comment posted by asim rafiqui on March 20, 2008

Philip Jones Griffiths was both a hero and an inspiration to me. A great loss.

Comment posted by David Dare Parker on March 20, 2008

A remembrance of PJG . . .

Once when I was photo editing at US News, I asked the magazine's library to
help me find a copy of Vietnam, Inc. for research. They put out a request on
DC's intra-library loan network, and procured a copy - from the Pentagon.

Shortly after, I had occasion to tell Philip about it. He gruffly replied,
"They probably never opened it." Sure enough, the book was spotless.

Comment posted by Andrew Popper on March 20, 2008

While it is truly sad that Philip has left this world before his time, we can all take solace in the fact that while he was here he made an impact on humanity that will far surpass what most of us can do, and left us with a wealth of his wisdom and experience that we can draw on to improve ourselves for the future.

His impact on "us" cannot be denied, and we shall use that influence to better ourselves in times to come. Our sadness for his passing should not be outweighed by our appreciation of his life and what he was able to accomplish in the time that he did have.

Comment posted by Darren Abate on March 20, 2008

Often mischievously cantankerous, he had a real generosity of heart plus, of course, an immense talent that made the world think. He was also the consummate B&W professional…. A skill that these days is often polluted… His photographs were about the subjects and the people he addressed…. Not about himself.
Around SE Asia he was a very well liked man indeed. He had time for people and he will be greatly missed. My deepest condolences to his family.

Comment posted by Dan White on March 20, 2008

Once, a long ago, a great photographer was asked of which was the secret of taking the right photography to show the world.
"Just open your eyes".
"That's the only thing you need".
From today's on... without your eyes opened on it, the world won't be the same.
Ciao Philip

Comment posted by Laura Montanari on March 20, 2008

Philip was my favourite customer at Keens Steak house where I worked as a barman for 14 years. I never told any one who he was and I never told him I was a photographer too. He presented me with his book Dark Odyssey in 1999, and it remains as one of my favorite books to this day. His entrance to the clam bar, two leicas hanging from his neck was like a breath of fresh air, never knowing where he had recently visited and what stories he would tell. Quite often he would be with his daughter enjoying a burger or on other occations with photographers, news reporters and an intern or two they would consume our legendary mutton chops, jolly well satisfied. He made a marked impression on my life which I deeply appreciate. Sorry but Im no longer at the bar, but think he would have liked to know that now Im a gardener.

Comment posted by Edwin Hemsley on March 20, 2008

Philip,

You helped us so much , letting us use your Agent Orange photos for our information campaign. .

We'd like to share with everyone the testimonial you wrote for us in dec 2006 :

"Dioxin poisoning is one of the greatest problems facing mankind. The epicenter is to be found in Viet Nam, where for political reasons the innocent victims are not compensated. It is also the one place where research can produce answers that can benefit all of us. America dropped Agent Orange to kill trees, not harm people. Why do they ignore the victims? Why won't they carry out the research? And compensate the afflicted?"

Unfortunately , this testimonial is still relevant
( http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/86/i09/8609news5.html )

Rest In Peace Philip.

We keep on fighting for justice.

Duc

Comment posted by Vietnam-Dioxin Collective on March 21, 2008

PJ Grif. You will be missed and not forgotten.

Comment posted by jack on March 21, 2008

cphilip should be remembered more r\for the honour he believed in taking on the responsiblitity for others. He was one of the most unselfish, loving and caring people I ever met and so removed from ther egotistic magnum photographic world. His respect toward woman and his understanding and love far surpasses any creative art intelllegenual explaination of his photographic work.. His greatestest photgraphes show the plight of women, victiums of circustances, not of their makings, eventhe women who he loved focused on the injustice that needed to be shown in this world. No celebrate Philip in that it gives me cheer to know that that there are still a few more conserned with helping others than promoting themselves. Philip Jones Griffiths legecy is his loving family and children who he cherished and adorored and took the responsibility to make their world a better place. His kindness and fight for truth has made this world a much better place.

Comment posted by susan on March 22, 2008

It was a privilege to have known him to have had him as a friend and relative. He taught me so much, not just about photography, but about life too. He had values that surpass conventional religions. An enormous loss, but through his work he is still with us and always will be.

Comment posted by Gerallt Llewelyn on March 22, 2008

pj,i decided you were probably a genius when i first found your photo books around the age of 14. my suspicions were confirmed years later when i first witnessed the spectacle that was your method for making a perfect cup of tea andskill at wearing kickass scarves. magnum has lost one of its strongest links today. myonly hope is that you are hanging out with bob and henri, gambling on a pinball game. cheers mate.

Comment posted by anon on March 22, 2008

i've just known you from your portfolio this morning.
you are my hero.

very sad..

Comment posted by Chaiwat on March 22, 2008

Philip,
Your wry sense of humor as seen in the captions you attached to many of your photos only added to the enjoyment I got from looking at the visual images. Thank you so much.

Comment posted by scott lucas on March 23, 2008

i worked for philip for most of the 1980's. i learned so many things from him, he was very generous to me with his time, humor, and knowledge. i had not been in touch with him for a few years and i found out philip's death in time magazine. i hadnn't known he was sick. that was earlier today and tonight i still feel the heavy effects of having been hit with a ton of bricks. my spiritual prayers are for fanny and donna.
his greatness as a phographer has been stated so well by many, i would just like to say that i miss him very much, and am so thankful to have known him and been his friend.
(Donna - if you or Fanny read this i would so grateful if you would e-mail me at kaglasgow@optonline.net)

Comment posted by keith glasgow on March 24, 2008

My condolences to Philip's family and friends, in and out of Magnum.

I brushed, not so lightly and quite literally against Philip in the early or mid-1980s.

A large, bearish but benign looking man came crashing through the Cafe at Grand Central bar one early evening, pursued by a taxi driver of indeterminate nationality, brandishing a tire iron apparently hellbent on destruction. Instinctively, i tried to stop the fleeing fellow who I recognized as Philip Jones Griffiths, a Magnum photographer I knew slightly and admired greatly. I only succeeded in sending Philip sprawling to the floor unhurt, while several of us managed to disarm
the cabbie and send him on his way.

When Philip realized that his ungraceful spill may have saved him from a skull fracture, or worse, the goofy mixed-feeling grin that wreathed his Welsh face was positively beatific.

Adrian Taylor

Comment posted by adrian taylor on March 25, 2008

thank youuu soo much

Comment posted by prefabrike on March 25, 2008

On having observed thoroughly every photo in the documentaries of every photographer, it is possible to feel melancholy and hope for our brothers, those that are suffering, for absurd wars! The images are impressive, I congratulate them on so well elaborated work. Continue this way! MY FELT condolences to his family .

But because I ask for silence do not believe that I am going to die:
Everything opposite happens to me:
It happens that I am going to live through myself.

It happens that I am and that I continue.

.."It will not be, so, but I enter of me cereals will grow, first the grains that break the land to see the light, but the mother land is dark:
And inside I me am dark:
I am like a well in whose waters the night it leaves his stars and it is still alone for the field.

It is a question as through that so much I have lived that I want to live through other one so much.

I never felt so sonorous, I have never had so many kisses.

Now, like always, it is early.
It demolishes the light with his bees.

Make me alone with the day.
I ask for permission to be born".PABLO NERUDA

Comment posted by orlany on March 26, 2008

A l'occasion de la disparition de Philip Jones Griffiths, l 'ensemble des photographes de l'association Fedephoto souhaitent rendre hommage à cet immense photographe, engagé et humaniste auquel beaucoup d'entres nous doivent tant.

Comment posted by Georges Merillon on March 27, 2008

When I was a very young and very green photographer, Philip showed me extraordinary generosity: he gave me all his old Olympus OM-1 cameras and a Leica thrown in for good measure so I could go to Guatemala and take pictures for Geo magazine. When I protested (not very much, since I really needed a camera), he told me not worry: the Olympus corporation kept giving him new ones, he said, in exchange for endorsements, so he was happy to be rid of them, or so he claimed. I used the cameras for eight years in Guatemala, and they served me well; I still have them, dents and all. When I returned from Guatemala four months later, he looked at my photos and told me honestly but without ruining my photographic aspirations, which ones didn't work and why. I learned more from those critiques than I did from all my photo editors combined.

At about the same time, I got a show of my b/w photos at O.K. Harris Gallery in Soho. However, I had no place to print the photos, much less the money to have them printed. Again, Philip to the rescue. He loaned me a tiny darkroom he rented on West 30-something street, and I spent the summer smelling of Dektol. Without Philip, there would have been no show.

However, Philip wasn't just gracious with cameras and darkrooms. Even if he was crashing in a friend's apartment, certain rituals of civilization had to be maintained. I remember Philip having me for tea. He was as meticulous about tea as he was about photos: no tea was adequate unless you first heated the mug for two minutes. Philip was as concerned about that mug as he was about his photos. I remember sitting there thinking, "Why does the mug have to be so hot?" After all, any tea would do. But that was Philip: a perfectionist to the end.
I will miss you: your friendship and your unvarnished opinions on everything from U.S. foreign policy to Brooke Shields to Indian food, and our long conversations walking up Broadway. You were a mentor and a true friend. I will miss you.
Jean-Marie

Comment posted by Jean-Marie Simon on March 28, 2008

Phillip Jones-Griffiths spent some time with me, in my house, at Mendi in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea in late 1972. We had a wonderful time together, sharing stories, visiting the local people, taking photographs - while he decompressed Vietnam. Phil taught me more about photography than I could ever remember; everything but what he had in abundance: photography's instinct. Was it Phil's supernatural power of observation, his lightning reflexes,his matery of equipment, technique and materials, his capacity to sense a future that will crystallize only a fraction of seconds ahead of the indifference of now that gave him his unerring power to capture the 'decisive moment?' Or was it his intense humanity - the humanity that made him wonder, more than a decade later, what became of the women and their babies to whom he unwittingly dispensed Thalidomide at Boots the chemist in Rhyl (or was it Bangor?) in the early 1960s? All of those essentials, surely, but above all, it must have been Phil's humanity. If ever there was a lover of humankind it was Phillip Jones-Griffiths. No wonder he became a father of daughters.

Phil and I had a wonderful time together but never met or contacted again. We might have done, ten years later, in Tokyo in 1982. I met a photographer, he was photographing, I was filming the crowd of old soldiers, old ladies and young nationalsists that greeted the Emperor and his family that imperial birthday morning. He told me he was with Magnum, I asked him if he knew Phil. He told me he did and that Phil was in town but leaving next day. I called the landlady of an establishment that might have been the Chelsea if it were in New York. She told me Phil was already gone. I might have tried harder to find him but, I never did . . . maybe I was afraid that if I did the magic of our first encounter would be gone. But, I've missed him since and I'll be sad and surprised if I don't miss him forever.

Richard Longley, Toronto, Canada

Phil was a great lover of women. He adored them with a blend of adoration, passion and parental affection, an emotional blend that wins little sympathy and less understanding today than it did 35 or even 100 years ago. He assured me that Bangkok is the most accurately named city in the world an urged me to visit it. Phil was one of those people who fills a moment in a life and remains lodged there forever, a grain of congenial sand that wraps everything it touches in an immense pearl of genius, congeniality and laughter. I suppose i hardly knew him but I miss him.

Comment posted by Richard Longley on March 29, 2008

le meilleur hommage possible est de garder la rigueur qu'il a eu toute sa vie ,rigueur et tolérance .Merci cher maitre de nous avoir donné le bon éxemple .

Comment posted by Pitchal on March 29, 2008

Very sad to hear of PJGs passing. Along with Don McCullin and Larry Burrows he showed what great photography can do to illuminate and educate people about what is really happening on our tiny planet. RIP Phil you are greatly missed.
Patrick Eden
ps I must confess to being very cross about the almost complete indifference shown by the British so called "quality" press.

Comment posted by Patrick Eden on March 31, 2008

I was a reporter for US newspapers in Vietnam in 1970. Philip and I became friends; he was always helpful to new people like me, giving advice that could lead to a story or, sometimes, save our lives. I volunteered to be a straight man for him a couple of times, and my photo appears in "Vietnam Inc." bargaining with a young Vietnamese girl at a booth for a picture of some of the local birds, though the displays on the back wall were much more racy. Once Phil administered a test of my potential for framing photos effectively. He said I made the worst score he had ever seen. He was right. My most-published photo was taken by accident as I was falling out of a jeep.

Phil was at Hue in 1968, in the middle of an ongoing firefight, for days. Like the rest of the reporters and photographers I knew, he took the risks that his profession required, and he did honor to Magnum. He had an unflinching commitment to show the damage done to the innocent, the tragic results of cultural ignorance, the thousand-yard stares of young soldiers, both American and Vietnamese, who had seen terrible things and grown old in the flower of their youth.

We went our separate ways, but I kept up with Phil from a distance through mutual friends and later through the Web. I was glad to see the reissue of "Vietnam Inc." which once again seems topical. It was a somber reminder that the lessons of one generation are not necessarily passed to the next. For that we can thank this man. RIP, my old comrade.

Steve Cowper
Governor of Alaska, 1986-1990

Comment posted by Steve Cowper on April 3, 2008

Mi pésame más sincero a quien tuvo un compromiso emotivo y duradero con la paz.

Comment posted by el rayo verde on April 4, 2008

I am Vietnamese. Thanks for your photo, Griffiths.

Comment posted by hongthuanle on April 4, 2008

As a fellow Welshman and a photographer, it saddened me to hear of Mr. Jones Grifiths' death.
BBc Wales showed their excellent documentry tonight of Phillip's visit to Wales, where he admitted on camera that he uses his place of birth to rekindle his spiritual identity. His upbringing is so typical of many welsh speaking people here in North Wales, however, his talent and intellect was/is truly global. An inspiration to me as a Welshman and probably one of the most important photo-journalist of the 20th centuary.

Comment posted by gareth jones on April 7, 2008

It seems unbelievable and shocking. I still remember him at SIFEST Portfolio in Savignano Italy last year early september while opening and accompanying us to visit his exhibithion
of the 50's and 60' and taking the attention of a crowdy audience during a debate on is vietnameese reportage.
I like to remember him, during the same days, standing before the camera of Malik Sidibe for a picture .
Good bye and Thank You Philip.

Angelo Tumedei Savignano Sul Rubicone Italy

Comment posted by angelo tumedei on April 8, 2008

My Dearest Philip,

I so miss your voice. Thank you for all you have given me.
You were, and still are, an enormous presence in my life.

with love,
Robin

Comment posted by Robin Bowman on April 8, 2008

Ein großartiger Kämpfer für den Frieden!

Mit seiner Kamera zeigte er der Welt die Wahrheit, jenseits aller Illusionen .

Ich verneige mich vor Philip Jones Griffiths.

Comment posted by Fritz Elvers on April 15, 2008

I met Philip while an art student at St Martin's in 1974. An advertisment on the school bulletin board read something like: "Weekend photojournalism course in a Welsh cottage with Philip Jones Griffiths, Martin Parr and Dan Meadows" It did seem an unlikely event - studying war photography in a Welsh village, but I knew it was not to be missed. He was, as anyone who knew him can attest, an amazing raconteur - amiable and poignant at the same time, and incredible to watch with a camera - "in and out" he said as the eight or ten of us armed with cameras entered a supermarket - invisibly - looking for decisive moments. What he came out with was remarkable. After that weekend I became a photojournalist for several years, ultimately choosing design as a career. We worked together once and met up again in New York when I moved there. Philip had an amzing effect on the people he touched - as witness the entries to this blog. I was showing his work as an alternative to a student who wanted to give up art school and join the Army in Afghanistan. The next day I received the email from Magnum. Today, I was at a newsagents in Toronto when I thought I heard a voice "you probably want to know what it's like to be dead - well we just stand around on our heads up to our necks in shit" and then I heard that laugh...

Comment posted by Robert Appleton on April 22, 2008