David Burnett (born 1946)[1] is an American magazine photojournalist based in Washington, D.C. His work from the 1979 Iranian revolution was published extensively in Time (including its "Man of the Year" portrait of the Ayatollah Khomeini).

[5] Burnett said that he knew he wanted to be a photographer from the experience working on the yearbook and that within a year or two he became a stringer for a local weekly and occasionally sold pictures of Friday night basketball to The Salt Lake Tribune.

Burnett was one of the photojournalists present at Trảng Bàng in Tây Ninh Province when Nick Ut of the Associated Press captured his famous image of the nine-year-old Vietnamese girl Phan Thị Kim Phúc and some other children fleeing a napalm attack.

Two South Vietnamese Skyraider aircraft went off course and dropped the incendiary bombs near the journalists, resulting in the deaths of two children and inflicting serious burns on others, including Kim Phúc.

[8][failed verification] His work covering the 2004 Olympics with an array of antiquated cameras and films received positive reviews in the photography press and in The New York Times.