Burt Glinn, 82; captured iconic images of Cold War
NEW YORK - Burt Glinn, a photojournalist whose images of historic moments of the Cold War include Fidel Castro's 1959 march on Havana and Nikita Khrushchev's visit to the United States that year, has died. He was 82.
Mr. Glinn, who lived in East Hampton, died on Wednesday, according to Magnum Photos Inc., the international cooperative founded in 1947 by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The cause of Mr. Glinn's death was not immediately available.
Mr. Glinn began his career with the photo agency in 1951 and became a full member in 1954, eventually covering events in Japan, the Soviet Union, and Mexico, among other places.
The photographer also covered the Sinai War and the US Marine invasion of Lebanon.
A highlight of Mr. Glinn's career came on New Year's Eve 1958, when he was in New York and got word that the dictator Fulgencio Batista had fled the country and that a ragtag band of revolutionaries led by Castro would be making a triumphant march into Havana.
Mr. Glinn figured he would head down there.
"At seven in the morning I was in Havana at the airport figuring out how to find where this thing was going on," Mr. Glinn said in an interview with Magnum Photo on the agency's website. "You can't just get in a cab and say, 'Take me to the revolution.' "
He was later able to get close enough to Castro to capture compelling images of the rebel in his fatigues as he met with supporters.
Mr. Glinn's other iconic image pictured the back of Khrushchev's head in front of the Lincoln Memorial during his official visit to Washington, D.C. in 1959. Mr. Glinn called the shot of the Soviet Union's premier a result of "luck" because he was running late.
"If I'd been on time I could have gotten a very ordinary picture of Khrushchev and Henry Cabot Lodge looking at this statue of Lincoln but you couldn't see the statue," he said later.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1925, Mr. Glinn served in the Army from 1943 to 1946, studied at Harvard University, and worked for Life magazine from 1949 to 1950 before joining Magnum Photos.
His work has been widely exhibited, most recently at the Seattle Art Museum.
