Catherine Leroy

Catherine Leroy, mythical figure of the war photography is dead 7 July 2006

The AFP new indicates « The French photographer Catherine Leroy, that had covered Vietnam and Lebanon wars is dead last evening Friday continuations of a cancer to Los Angeles...
Described by its colleagues as a small frail woman, it was "a figure a bit mythical of the world of the photography of war, one of the rare women present to Vietnam during the period it hardest of the conflict", has indicated in the AFP to Arles Robert Pledge, director of the Contact Press Images agency.

Catherine "had the reputation to be a photographer of a courage and a proverbial and extraordinary will that made the jealousy of its competitive males", he said.
The photographer had been thus the alone to be parachuted of night with American troops and had been made prisoner by the Vietcong to the battle of Booed, he tells.
She had been the alone journalist accredited by Americans in 1967 to participate in an airborne intervention with 173e regiment of parachutists during the operation "Junction City".
Working then to Lebanon, it had been "kidnapped and brutalized of terrible manner, and never had been then really acclimated to a more sedentary life and easier", has - it added.
…
Installed in the United States where she photographed a few mode and magazine, she had realized a book on the great photographers of Vietnam, published at Random House.
It has achieved many prices George Polk Award, the Sigma Delta Chi, The Art Director's Club of New York...), and has been the first woman has received the price Robert Capa for its cover of the civilian war o Lebanon in 1976. " For me it is the picture of a young girl of 21 years old, with pig tails, who will jump in parachute at 30 April 1967 with 173e regiment of parachutists.
The best homage that we can render her is to look her site «UNDERFIRE».

pierre j.