Leroy, Catherine

(1944- )

French journalist, one of the most daring combat photographers of the Vietnam War. Born in Paris, Catherine Leroy left for Vietnam in 1966, at the age of twenty-one, carrying a Leica camera. In 1967, with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, she became the first accredited journalist to participate in a combat parachute jump. She was later wounded in action while with a U.S. Marine unit in the Demilitarized Zone, but her photographs of the assault on Hill 881 were published around the world. Early in 1968, during the Tet Offensive, she was captured in Hue by the North Vietnamese Army but was eventually released. She returned to Saigon with photographic documentation of the experience.

She left Vietnam in 1968 and went on to cover some of the major conflicts in places such as Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam again, Angola, China, Pakistan, and Libya that marked the second half of the twentieth century. Her photographs were published in magazines such as Paris Match, Stern, Epoca, The Sunday Times, Look, Life, and Time, where she worked as a contract photographer from 1977 to 1986.

In 1983, in collaboration with Newsweek correspondent Tony Clifton, Leroy published God Cried, a book about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The volume described events starting with the siege of Beirut in the summer of 1982 to the departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the massacres by paramilitaries allied to the Israelis at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.


Leroy has received numerous awards, including the Robert Capa Award for her coverage of the fighting in Saigon (she is the first female recipient of this award); the George Polk Award; Picture of the Year Award; the Sigma Delta Chi Award; the Art Director’s Club of New York Award; and the Honor Award for Distinguished Service in Journalism from the University of Missouri. In 1996 a retrospective of her work was organized in Perpignan, France, at Visa pour I’Image, the prestigious photojournalism festival.

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