Dang Van Phuoc Dies at 90; Intrepid Photojournalist in Vietnam War

Dang Van Phuoc, a Vietnamese-born photographer for The Associated Press whose dauntless work on the front lines of the Vietnam War powerfully depicted scenes of bravery and terror, and who lost his right eye in a grenade explosion, died on May 23 in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 90.

The A.P. announced his death, which was confirmed by his nephew Van Nguyen.

From 1965 until the war ended in 1975, Mr. Phuoc roved South Vietnam — in Da Nang, Saigon, Hue and Khe Sanh — and traveled to North Vietnam for a daylight raid near the port of Haiphong aboard the heavy cruiser Newport News.

One of his most moving photographs was of an American soldier stooping slightly to help a fragile old woman resettle in a refugee camp when other villagers refused to help her. In the Ho Bo Woods, north of Saigon, he came upon a barren landscape where soldiers had taken refuge in an enormous crater created by a bomb dropped from a B-52.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/business/media/dang-van-phuoc-dead.html