Photojournalist in Asia, Middle East
LONDON — Photographer Max Nash, who covered conflicts in Southeast Asia and the Middle East and helped nurture a new generation of female photojournalists during more than 40 years with The Associated Press, died Friday after collapsing at home. He was 77.
Known in his youth for a mop of flaming red hair, eccentric color combinations in his clothes and the Gitanes he smoked until giving them up later in life, Mr. Nash also shot Formula One auto racing, celebrity Red Carpet events and politics before retiring from the AP in 2004.
Born in London on Sept. 3, 1941, Mr. Nash first studied photography under his father, former Paris AP photo editor Michael O’Reilly Nash. His formal education took place in Switzerland, France and finally England, where he graduated from the British Merchant Marine Officers’ school. After a stint in the North Atlantic, Mr. Nash decided to pursue photojournalism.
He worked first for The New York Times before joining the AP bureau in Brussels in 1963. Mr. Nash arrived at Saigon’s AP Bureau in late 1968. Mr. Nash later worked in Cambodia in the uncertain days after U.S.-backed Gen. Lon Nol overthrew Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970.
Later, Mr. Nash covered the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, the Palestinian uprising and riots in the West Bank and Gaza in the late 1980s. Those assignments were followed by the First Gulf War and a rash of bombings in Israel in the mid-1990s.
He was “forever roaming” the backroads in his Alfa Romeo, said former Jerusalem bureau chief Nick Tatro.
“He always tried to be first on the scene of major stories, and since speed was rarely an object, he usually was,” Tatro said. “I remember a few white-knuckle rides.”