Catherine Leroy

Catherine Leroy (1945 – 8 July 2006) was a French-born photojournalist and war photographer, whose stark images of battle illustrated the story of the Vietnam War in the pages of Life magazine and other publications.

Catherine was brought up in a convent in Paris. She was moved by images of war she had seen in Paris Match, and decided she wanted to travel to Vietnam to "give war a human face." At the age of 21 she booked a one-way ticket to Laos in 1966, with just one Leica M2 and $100 in her pocket.

On arrival in Saigon Leroy met the photographer Horst Faas, bureau chief of the Associated Press. A year later she became the first accredited journalist to participate in a combat parachute jump, joining the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Operation Junction City. Two weeks after the battle for Hill 881, she was wounded with a Marine unit near [1] the demilitarized zone. In 1968, during the Tet Offensive, Leroy was captured by the North Vietnamese Army. She managed to talk her way out and emerged as the first newsperson to take photographs of North Vietnamese Army Regulars [2] behind their own lines. The story made the cover of Life Magazine.

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