John Edwards Nance (1935-2010) became a reporter and photographer for The Associate Press (AP), after his graduation from the University of Oregon. AP assigned him to Vietnam in 1965, where he stayed for two years, covering the war. In 1968, he was named AP’s bureau chief in Manila, the Philippines. Through the aviator Charles Lindbergh, whom he met on reportage, he came in contact with the Tasaday, an indigenous tribe of the Philippine island of Mindanao. The Tasaday had been living in complete isolation in the rain forest, until their ‘discovery’ by Western scientists in 1971. Nance spent 40 years photographing and writing about the Tasaday. In 1978, he left AP, and moved to Ohio in the late 1990s, where he worked as a writer in residence at the Thurber House, a non-profit literary center and museum. In 2012, Thurber House, together with the Arts Initiative at The Ohio State University, created the annual John E. Nance Writer-in-Residence Program, dedicated to his memory.
