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Capturing Combat

Remembering Philip Jones Griffiths, war photographer and keen chronicler of everyday life.

Photojournalism lost one of its giants Wednesday with the passing of Philip Jones Griffiths. A member of the esteemed Magnum photo agency since 1966, the Welsh-born photojournalist leaves behind a body of work from assignments in more than 120 countries. He was a canny observer of daily life, as is evident in the pictures he made while walking the streets of countless cities. But it was his work in Vietnam for which he will be most remembered, the culmination of which was the 1971 book, 'Vietnam Inc.', a work credited with accelerating the West's disillusionment with the war. Henri Cartier-Bresson was quoted as saying, 'Not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths.' Fred Ritchen, a former picture editor of The New York Times who is now a professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, remembered Griffiths as 'a curmudgeon, a challenger of pieties, capable of intense vitriol. He was also one of the most old-fashioned and decent people around.' Griffiths was 72. What follows is a sampling of some of his finest work.