John Morris, 100 years old on December 7, 2016, has spent a lifetime as a photojournalist and is reflecting on grave war scenes that he has seen over the last century.
Born during WWI, he became a photo editor in WWII for Robert Capa’s Life magazine. During the Vietnam War, his graphic photos ended up on the front page of The New York Times. John Morris is considered in the photojournalist world one of the most important editors in the history of photography.
“But that was just the beginning for Morris. He went on to work at the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Geographic and Magnum Photos. He became a legend himself” (Liz Ronk, at Time Magazine).
John Morris, I think is someone that an aspiring photojournalist, such as myself, can look up to and admire. Photojournalism is a career that takes over your life, if there is a news story forming, you are there ready to capture the photos.
“But who could not be intrigued and inspired by John’s career, success, and dedication?” Robert Sullivan, editor of LIFE Books from 1990 to 2015 said in an interview with Time Magazine.
Everyone that was interviewed to review John Morris at Time magazine, had nothing but great things to say about Morris.
“John G. Morris is this kind of guy you’re always impressed to meet.” Said Jean-Francois Leroy, director of the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival in an interview concluded with Time.
Morris took this job very seriously, even when his birthday fell on December 7th 1941, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, he did not take the day off.
“On his 25th birthday, which fell on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Mr. Morris, then a correspondent for Life magazine in Los Angeles, was at home tossing a football with a friend as his wife, Mary, baked a birthday cake. Around noon, he received a call from his editors telling him that Pearl Harbor had been attacked earlier that day. He rushed downtown to the Little Tokyo neighborhood and ended his day at 3 a.m. at the F.B.I. headquarters, where Japanese-Americans on an agency watch list were being rounded up” wrote James Estrin, a journalist for the New York Times.
All throughout WWII, instead of being at home or fighting with a weapon on the front lines in Europe, Morris used his camera to show what was going on. His camera became his weapon as he exposed what was happening in Europe to the rest of Americans who were not a part of the war.
“To better understand the photos he was editing, he created the job title of “coordinator of photographers on the western front,” which allowed him to walk ashore in Normandy in July 1944 and accompany individual photographers from The Associated Press and Life for a month” James Estrin.
John Morris is a very admirable person whose photojournalist skills made a lasting impression on the world. I would assume that most people in the photojournalistic world would have heard of him, making him a very skilled and important figure.