Issue:
Max Desfor, veteran AP cameraman, Pulitzer Prize winner and former FCCJ president turned 100 on Nov. 8, and celebrated the next day with some 100 guests at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.
Desfor is one of two survivors of the 180 AP staffers who covered World War II, according to the news agency. He covered the Pacific theater, photographing the return to Saipan of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay after the Hiroshima A-bomb attack and the Sept. 2 1945 Japanese surrender on the U.S. battleship Missouri.
He won his Pulitzer in 1951 for photography with his Korean War pictures, notably the dramatic shot of refugees crawling across a bombed bridge. (On display in the Club’s 20F Interview Room.)
Desfor was based in Tokyo for many years and served as FCCJ President in the 1974-5 period. He retired from the agency in the ’70s and directed photography at U.S. News and World Report until 1980.
He became a newlywed for the second time when he married his long-time friend Shirley Belasco, 92, when he was 98.
Desfor has said there was no secret to his photography, just: “Shoot first and ask questions later.”
— from New York Times Lens blog
