John G Morris

Early life and family background

Morris was born on December 7, 1916 in Maple Shade, New Jersey and grew up in Chicago.

His father, John Dale Morris, born in 1869 on a Missouri farm, was a salesman who started out selling dictionaries, then encyclopedias. He founded a book publishing company named John D. Morris & Company of Philadelphia but went broke during the Panic of 1907. His father later worked for Chicago-based La Salle Extension University that provided extension courses.

His mother, Ina Arabella Godfrey, was the daughter of a doctor in Colon, Michigan. She studied Greek and Latin classics and joined the Grand Tour of Europe before working for John D. Morris & Company. She met John Dale Morris and they married in 1908, giving birth to their first child, a girl, in 1909.

Career

Morris edited photographs for magazines and newspapers, working with hundreds of photographers. He helped launch a student publication modeled on Life magazine during his time in University of Chicago and was the picture editor. After graduating in 1938, he found a job in the mailroom, away from the danger, in Time-Life publications becoming serving as Life’s Hollywood correspondent. Morris worked for the weekly picture magazine Life throughout World War II. As Life's London picture editor he was responsible for the coverage of the invasion of France on June 6, 1944 – D-Day, thus editing the historic photographs of Robert Capa.

After the war he became successively the picture editor of the U.S. monthly Ladies' Home Journal, executive editor of Magnum Photos, assistant managing editor for graphics of The Washington Post in the 1960s and picture editor of The New York Times from 1967-73.

He continued his career during the Vietnam War. In 1968 he insisted that a photo by Eddie Adams of the Associated Press (AP), showing a South Vietnamese police official in the act of executing a Viet Cong prisoner with a shot to the head, be run on the front page of the New York Times. Four years later, he selected another photo by Nick Ut, showing a naked and screaming Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack.

In 1983, Morris moved to Paris, as the European correspondent of National Geographic. As a freelance writer and editor, his primary concern was working for peace. He turned 100 in December 2016.

Personal life

Morris was married three times, first to Mary Adele Crosby who died in 1964 in childbirth along with the baby. His second wife, Marjorie Smith, died in 1981. His third wife, photographer Tana Hoban, died in 2006. He was survived by his partner, Patricia Trocme from Paris, along with four children (two children from his first marriage and another two from his second marriage) and four grandchildren. He died on July 28, 2017 at a hospital in Paris, aged 100.

Awards

Publications

His autobiography, Get the Picture: a Personal History of Photojournalism, was published in 1998. He was co-author of Robert Capa: D-Day, in French and English (Point de Vues, 2004). In 2014, his book, Quelque Part en France - L'Été 1944 de John G. Morris (Somewhere in France - The Summer 1944 of John G. Morris), was published. The book was conceived by Robert Pledge of Contact Press Images. It contains the photographs Morris took during his Summer 1944 trip to Normandy, shortly after the D-Day landing on June 6, 1944, and the letters to his wife written "somewhere in France."

Publications edited by Morris

Publications by Morris

In media