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Phuoc passed away on Saturday in Southern California after an unexpected collapse, according to his nephew, Van Nguyen.
In 1965, Phuoc was recruited by Horst Faas, the former head of photography at AP, to succeed a local hire who had tragically lost his life during an assignment. Phuoc quickly earned respect among fellow journalists and American and South Vietnamese forces for his remarkable knack for locating the heart of the conflict.
Born in 1935 in a village near Quang Ngai, south of Da Nang, Phuoc was the youngest among many siblings. At the age of around 10, his father was killed by local Viet Cong insurgents. Shortly afterwards, he lost his mother, leaving him without a home.
“He was truly an extraordinary man who overcame a difficult childhood,” remarked Nguyen.
As a young adult, Phuoc volunteered to assist with equipment at a Saigon film studio where Nguyen’s mother worked as a cook. It was in this environment that Phuoc first got hold of a camera and self-taught himself the art of photography, according to his nephew.
Phuoc, who was dubbed the AP’s “secret weapon” by his boss, was known for walking with the “point man” on combat patrols, putting him in position to get excellent photographs — but also exposing him to grave danger.
He was wounded at least five times during his 10 years with the AP in Vietnam, the first time just five months after he was hired. A grenade explosion left him with shrapnel in his chest and leg, but he was back on duty within a few months covering the drawn-out civil war between the Communist forces of North Vietnam and the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese military.
In 1968, he sustained a concussion when he was hit in the head by a rocket while covering street fighting in Saigon. That same year, Phuoc risked sniper fire to carry a wounded U.S. soldier to safety and received a commendation from the Ninth U.S. Army Infantry Division for saving the man’s life.
Phuoc lost his right eye in a grenade explosion in 1969 while on patrol with a Ranger battalion south of Da Nang, along Vietnam’s central coast. He learned to shoot with one eye and returned to work.
In a 2011 interview for AP’s archives, Phuoc described the difficulty of working with one eye when he had to look through the camera while also watching for silent hand gestures from the soldiers with whom he was patrolling.
His colleague in AP’s Saigon bureau, Huỳnh Công “Nick” Út, described Phuoc as fearless and resourceful in the field. Behind the scenes, he was a giving man and loyal friend who treated Út like a brother.
“Everyone loved him so much,” Út said. “When I heard, I cried, ‘My brother, he’s gone.’”
Despite his reputation for shooting action, the photos that touched Phuoc were those that evoked the plight of civilians caught in the crossfire. In the 2011 interview, he compared himself to a “small grain of sand” who used his pictures to bring their stories to the world.
When Saigon fell in 1975, Phuoc fled with his family with little more than the clothes on their back and a bottle of milk. His family was rescued from a refugee camp in Guam with the help of AP reporter Linda Deutsch, who was covering the tent city, and flown to Camp Pendleton.
Phuoc then returned to Asia and worked briefly for the AP in Hong Kong before leaving the company and settling permanently in Southern California with his family.
He went on to become a professional portrait photographer in Orange County, which is home to Little Saigon, the largest single community of South Vietnamese refugees in the world.
His great-nephew, Kim Nguyen, looked back Tuesday at the portraits Phuoc shot of him as a baby and reminisced about bringing his own son to see Phuoc’s work on display at a museum in Vietnam.
In California, Phuoc was a founding member of The Artistic Photography Association and trained young photographers. He also was a civilian volunteer for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and in 1994 was named the county’s volunteer of the year.
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Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.