Eddie Adams
[Photojournalist, b. 1933, New Kensington, Pennsylvania, d. 2004, New York.]

 If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that’s a good picture. 
 I was getting money for showing one man killing another. Two lives were destroyed and I was getting paid for it. (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.) 
 I’m not a great believer in the power of the moving image. A still image has greater lasting power. A still photographer has to show the whole fucking movie in one picture. 
 All that a Pulitzer really does is give the obit writers something to put between the commas after your name. 
 Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. Words and pictures have a continuing struggle for primacy. In my mind, a person can write the best story in the world; but a photograph is absolute. 
 People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. 
 How do you know you wouldn’t have pulled the trigger yourself? (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.) 
 To tell the truth, I didn’t get scared too often. The adrenalin rush was so strong, I didn’t get scared until it was over. The next night, the next month. Or just last week. 
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