How photography from the Vietnam War has changed America

The TET -offensive – a number of surprise attacks by northern arms in early 1968 – changed the course of the war. Photographers who emphasize intensive fighting struggles from day to day pierced the optimistic claims of the US government that the enemy is on the last legs.

They were supported by new technologies. Cameras had become smaller and the film could be developed and transmitted via telephone lines or satellites, which the audience achieved faster than during an earlier war. In February 1968, a navy threw a grenade during the Battle of Hue, part of the TET offensive.

Politics was also important. In Vietnam, freelancers were slightly accredited and could simply appear on a helicopter trip to the front, photograph everywhere, publish the editors that would approved the editors, including this image of an American unit in February 1967.

When I reported the war in Iraq, journalists could only embed with troops after they had agreed to strict rules: no photos of Americans who were killed in action; Images of wounded Americans could only be published if the injured people agreed in writing.

There was less censorship in Vietnam, since the United States never officially declared the war and civil servants believed that greater access would lead to favorable cover.

It was also a guerrilla war with blurred front lines. Shortly, photographers took up their greatest moral and military challenge to separate the friend of the enemy; Civilian from the fighter.

In the picture above, American soldiers moved a captured Viet -Cong fighter through flat water.

After men were killed, women and children would be collected.

“Basically, we did everything that we walk around and wait for someone to shoot us,” said Bill Lord, a radio company of the army in Vietnam between 1966 and 1968, in an oral history that was associated with the 50th anniversary of the war. “And then we would try to catch them. I mean, we were basically bait.”

The war felt endless for Vietnam when Saigon’s central market burned at the end of 1971.

As Le Ly Haylip wrote in her memoirs: “When heaven and earth changed the places”, his tireless lack of action taught the Vietnamese “how we can be strong, while we are weak, how you are brave when we are afraid, how to be in the middle of the confusion and how we can no longer last, and how we can no longer be able to be wise.”

But the risks were real.

More than 100 photojournalists died from the mid-1950s to 1975 in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, including Robert Capa, one of the most admired people of the Second World War, and Larry Burrows, a photo-essay pioneer during the Vietnam War.

In the photo above, a helicopter team called his crew to his crew when a wounded pilot died next to him in March 1965.

Some barely escape, including Tim Page, who conquered this battlefield scene in 1968 and was a model for the wild, stone photographer by Dennis Hopper in “Apocalypse Now”. But his pictures pointed out bravery and humanism.

“The photos of Page had an impact because he came close – at least three times too close when he was seriously wounded,” said Ben Bohane, a friend of Page who writes his biography.

“It was the visceral nature of his pictures, unshakable photos of the dead and wounded on both sides, Vietnamese mothers in tears, children, the screaming, Catholic nuns who pass lime-cut limits, grunts in the mud in Khe Sanh-Sie can almost smell the scene.”

Over time, the struggle that photographers documented daily served an important purpose.

It prevented the public from forgetting the human tribute, like during this violent fire battle south of the DMZ in October 1966.

At that time there were fewer critics of journalism and photography. The political prejudices were not accepted; The disinformation flocked mainly from military briefing in Saigon, which reporters described as “five clock -follies”.

The most marked pictures fueled an anti -war movement that considered the war to be uncertain and unfair. Here an American soldier read a letter from home in March 1971.

“These pictures, all of these pictures -how many hundreds of times they were shown and they still bring me tears,” said Craig McNamara, anti -war activist and son of the Minister of Defense Robert S. McNamara, an architect of the war. “You were unique.”

Above a wounded woman during the Battle of Saigon in 1968.

Four years later, President Richard M. Nixon escalated the fights again.

In the hope of bringing Hanoi to a peace agreement, he said to his consultants: “The bastards have never been bombarded as if they were bombarded this time.”

The north declared victory on April 30, 1975 after tanks confiscated the independence palace in Saigon.

Far more than the coarse -grained photos made for western outlets, these are the type of pictures known among the Vietnamese.

“We believe that everyone has the same picture in the head,” said Quang Lam, artist and archivist in Ho Chi Minh City. “That’s not true.”

For veterans, the chance of returning home felt a victory – especially for prisoners of war like Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Stirm, welcomed by his family in March 1973 on the Travis Air Force Base in California.

However, many were also abuse and disrespect, in addition to combat trauma.

The war – and its pictures – changed America, difficult to do the distrust and make it difficult for the country to agree on the historical and future role of America in global affairs. We all live in Vietnam’s shadow in a way.

Perhaps this confirms that the relevance of Mr. O’Briens point in “The things you worn”.

Long after the war has stopped, the happiest end that you can hope for, survival and the continued search for understanding.

Like Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Vietnamese American author wrote: “All wars are waged twice, for the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.”