Pulitzer Prize photographer Slava ‘Sal’ Veder dies at 99

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Slava ‘Sal’ Veder, finest recognized for his image of a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel joyfully reuniting along with his household after 5 years in a prisoner of battle camp in Vietnam, died Aug. 22. He was 99.

Veder’s household on Wednesday confirmed that the retired Associated Press photojournalist died in his sleep, simply eight days shy of his one hundredth birthday, at his residence in El Dorado County, California, outdoors of Sacramento.

The San Francisco Bay Area native was 46 years outdated in March 1973 when he was despatched to Travis Air Force Base for the arrival of Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm and different battle prisoners getting back from Vietnam. Veder was in a crowded bullpen jockeying for footage with dozens of different photographers when, out of the nook of his eye, he noticed Stirm’s 4 kids start to gallop towards their father.

“You could tell, even at a distance, what they were feeling. It was all over them, their faces, the way they all broke into a run. There was a surge of emotion from the crowd, too,” Veder stated in a 2015 interview with The Guardian.

Using a makeshift darkroom arrange in a ladies’s rest room on base, Veder cranked out six photos, together with “Burst of Joy,” which received the 1974 Pulitzer in characteristic images. Veder famous that within the {photograph}, Stirm has his again to the digital camera, rendering him an everyman soldier returning to the simple pleasure and pleasure on the faces of his kids.

The photograph grew to become a logo of the tip of U.S. involvement within the Vietnam War. But for Stirm, it represented heartbreak as he had been handed a “Dear John” letter from his spouse, Loretta, by a chaplain upon his launch and the couple divorced a yr later. Stirm died in 2025.

Slava J. Veder was born Aug. 30, 1926, in Berkeley, California, to Ivan and Anka Veder, who had left Russia and brought the names John and Ann after they settled within the U.S. He was their solely baby.

He labored as a sports activities author and information editor at a number of publications and, in 1961, he was employed as a workers photographer by The Associated Press at its Sacramento bureau. Later, he transferred to the San Francisco workplace, which is the place he was based mostly when he took the prize-winning {photograph}.

“He was a newsman at heart, it wasn’t just a career for him. It was really his passion,” stated his daughter, Kathleen Daly. “The AP really was the home for him because they could appreciate what he had to offer.”