Newsday swashbuckling, world-wide, Pulitzer Prize-winning chain smoking photographer Viorel Florescu dies on April 30th, recording war, terrorism, revolution, and everyday life in New York City and Long Island. I did. 72.
According to his longtime friend and former Newsday photography colleague John Naso, the cause was cancer and he was diagnosed later last month. Floresque, who lived in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, died at Paoli Hospital.
With more than 20 years on Newsday and a stint in several other newspapers, Floresque has put himself at the center of his actions to film the news.
“Probably more than any other photojournalist, he’s in the middle of the event. He’s part of the event. He doesn’t take pictures with some kind of objectivity. He really feels the moment. He has a great instinct, “said Anda Onesa Lieberman, who helped organize an exhibition of Floresque’s work last year.
The two met in 1992 when Floresque came to take a picture of her for an article about Romanian film star Onesa Lieberman and taught American history in Manhattan.
John Keating, now Newsday’s director of multimedia news gathering and photography, marveled at Floresque’s courage. Especially, it is a photograph of 1994 when an assassination was attempted in Haiti. Near: Florescu, recording everything behind the camera. Then he helped bring the man whose head and stomach were shot to an ambulance.
“Biorel has shown tremendous courage in dangerous situations,” Keating said of a photo posted on the Newsday front page.
“He covered everything from the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center to the farm workers in the East End of Long Island,” Keating said. “He always brought memorable photos.”
Deborah Henley, now Newsday’s top editor, was Manhattan’s city desk editor when he first met Florescu in the 1990s.
“I always remember Viorel stopping by the newsroom, throwing waves at you and dressing him to blend in quietly wherever he went next,” she said. Said. “He emerged from the background, skillfully capturing moments of pride and joy, as well as emotional scenes of turmoil and difficult situations, demonstrating his true respect for the people who took the pictures. rice field.”
Former Newsday columnist Ellis Henican recalled his mission with the Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon in northern Georgia.
“The man kept telling me how much he hated’Furners’, then looked at Violel and added,” except you. ”
Known as “49” on the radio phone number, Floresque was born in 1949 in Sighisoara, in the historic region of Transylvania, Romania, and taught judo. He moved to the United States at the age of 30 and soon got a job in what is now called the Connecticut Post.
According to a biography prepared for the exhibition, “He will continue to cover hundreds of major news articles, but his passion is helplessly captured among the troops struggling for political power. It was to record the plight of ordinary human beings. ”
In addition to Newsday, where he worked for over 20 years, his photos have been published in Time, Life, Newsweek, New York Daily News, The New York Times, The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey, and many other places. I did. Publications around the world.
He won the World Press Award for Haiti’s first f coverage when he was on Newsday, New York, a correspondence in the now abandoned city of the paper.Three elections slaughtered at a polling place in the capital of Port-au-Prince in 1987.
He was then part of two Pulitzer Prize-winning Newsday teams for coverage of the Manhattan subway accident in 1991 and TWA 800 in 1996.
In 1994, he won the Overseas Press Club Award for his work filming a coup in Haiti and US intervention there.
His subjects included child soldiers in Colombia, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Liberia, a revolution in Romania, a war in the former Yugoslavia, a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and a war in Afghanistan and Hurricane Katrina. ..
“The common theme” and the biography said, “We continued to focus on how these events affected the general public.”
In September, his photo was featured at the Brancusi Gallery at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. Title: “RECOLLECTIVE”.
He has left behind his longtime companion, Deirdre Scott. The two met in 2009 when he was assigned by Daily News to cover her appointment as head of the Bronx Arts Council.
He was separated from his wife Florina Florescu, who died earlier this year, in 1994. He is survived by his adult son George Floresque in Pennsylvania, Alexander Floresque in Arizona, and his adult stepdaughter Anka Stachesk Germegeanu, and his grandchildren.
He will be cremated and a memorial service will be held in the future.
Newsday reporter Matthew Chayes since 2007 covers New York City Hall.
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