« Charles Bonnay, the French war photographer, died Monday of complications from acute leukemia. He was 55 years old.
Mr. Bonnay began his career in 1953 by parachuting into Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam to take pictures for the French Army.
Over the next three decades he covered the Algerian war, the war in the Congo, anti-Castro guerrillas and the 1967 war in the Middle East.
He returned to Vietnam in 1963, and, according to his agent, Jocelyne Benzakin, travelled to North Vietnam a year later to interview Ho Chi Minh.
Mr. Bonnay became well-known much earlier in his career when he tried to parachute onto a ship that had been hijacked off of Brazil in 1961. He missed the ship, but said he enjoyed trying to get a picture no one else had.
Born in Paris in 1930, Mr. Bonnay knew the meaning of war at a young age when, after Germany invaded France, the Nazis interned him and his mother because members of his family were active in the French Resistance.
Mr. Bonnay spent almost 10 years living in Tahiti after the end of the Vietnam War. In 1984 he came to Central America, where he remained to specialize in photographing Nicaraguan anti-Government guerrillas.
Last year he took a five-week trek with a guerrilla combat unit that marched and fought deep inside Nicaragua, a grueling feat for a man of 54 years. During one attack Mr. Bonnay said he was forced to hide alone in the woods for a day until the rebels could smuggle him to safety. His pictures appeared in Time magazine, The Sunday Times of London, Stern, Actuel and other leading publications.
Mr. Bonnay is survived by his mother, Jeanne Desmurs, who lives in Los Angeles. »
Courtesy « The New York Times »