David Burnett was born in 1946 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, and early in his career became the last photojournalist to cover the Vietnam War for Life magazine. He has since worked in over 60 countries, documenting the coup in Chile (1973), revolution in Iran (1979), famine in Ethiopia (1984), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and the US military intervention in Haiti (1994). A co-founder of Contact Press Images in 1976 with Robert Pledge, he is the winner of the 1973 Robert Capa Gold Medal, the 1979 World Press Photo Premier Award, the Overseas Press Club of America's Olivier Rebbot "Best Reporting from Abroad in Magazines and Books" Award in 1984, and a first prize in the World Press Photo in 2005.
A veteran journalist of the political scene in Washington, he has photographed every American president from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush (1963-2004). He has also covered every summer Olympics Games from 1984 to 2004, and is the author of E-motion: The Spirit of Sport. He has also been a contributor to National Geographic magazine, most recently producing a 26-page essay on the traces of Hurricane Katrina. Since his early work from Vietnam, he has been a regular contributor to Time magazine. He is based in Washington, D.C.