Re: [Leica] f/8 and be there

[chucko@siteconnect.com (Chuck Albertson)]

The photographers in WWII also shot plenty of stuff that was "not nice," but
it never made it past the censors, either the military's or the
publications' own gatekeepers---showing American casualties, for example,
was deemed detrimental to the war effort. There was no such direct
censorship in Vietnam, and a lot of the photography that was published was
grittier than people had seen in past wars. I don't think it was necessarily
the result of an adversarial relationship between the military and the
media, though there were some photographers the military didn't like
(Phillip Jones-Griffith, for one, who was denied a visa to re-enter Vietnam
as a result of his work) and some photographers that were opposed to the
war. Censorship of a sort, the "pool system," was reinstituted for the Gulf
War, with the result that a lot of the more interesting photography (in my
view) came from the photographers who evaded it.

There were plenty of iconic photographs from Vietnam that probably
influenced individuals' views of that war. But the most powerful
representation I remember was the issue of Life magazine in the summer of
1969, where they took the casualty list from a previous week (and that was
the year when American casualties were the highest), and ran all the high
school graduation or basic-training photos of the people on that list. It
put faces to all the numbers in the weekly body count, and I remember the
effect it had on a lot of people in the town I lived in.

Anyway, you might want to look for a copy of "Shooting War" by Susan Moeller
for an interesting analysis of this topic. It came out in the 1980's and is
probably out of print now, but a good library might have it.

Chuck Albertson
Seattle, Wash.

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "John Coan" <jcoan@alumni.duke.edu>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 9:28 AM
Subject: Re: [Leica] f/8 and be there


> Thanks to all for the interesting war stories.....  I cannot imagine being
> a real combat photog schleping a huge Speed Graphic and all its
accessories
> ashore with a Marine invasion force.  Those guys had some cojones.  A
> fascinating part of the history of photography.  I used to have a great
> book that I cannot find anymore.  "Life's Picture History of World War
> II".  I remember it came in a slip case, and was a big book with all black
> and white pictures.  I think of those great pictures, and then think of
the
> gear used to make them, and the men behind the viewfinder.  There are
bound
> to be some interesting books about this period and what it was like to be
a
> combat photographer -- anyone know of good ones?
>
> The relationship between journalists and the military also radically
> changed -- around the time of Viet Nam.  In that war, it was
> adversarial.  Photographers were there to shoot reality whether it helped
> or hurt our national interest.  The result was pictures of the way war is,
> mostly not nice stuff.  In WWII, that didn't happen.  Journalists were on
> the national team.  Look at some old newsreel footage or photos... the
> reporters were in military uniforms of all things.  This is interesting
> stuff to me (from a dilettante's perspective)
>