John Hoagland

Who was John Hoagland?

John Hoagland was a war photographer and photojournalist noted for his documentation of civil conflicts in Nicaragua, Lebanon, and El Salvador.

Hoagland was born in San Diego, California, and educated at the University of California, San Diego, where he was influenced by the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse, as well as a classmate, Angela Davis. During the Vietnam War, Hoagland applied for and received conscientious objector status, but war was a subject that had a massive impact on his life and death. He photographed the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, after which he moved to El Salvador in 1979. He also photographed in Beirut.

By 1984, Hoagland was on the "hit list" of the government death squads. Many of his colleagues had been assassinated already in El Salvador. On 16 March, he was gunned down while photographing a pair of Salvadoran soldiers. The journalist and photographer 'John Cassidy,' played by John Savage in the 1986 movie Salvador was loosely based on Hoagland.

Hoagland's son, Eros Hoagland, is also a photographer who currently works in conflict zones around the globe.