Looking at war; seeing people
“You can’t photograph bullets flying through the air. So it must be the wounded, or people running loaded with ammunition, and the expressions on their faces.” That was the way com bat photographer Larry Burrows described how he did his job, covering the war in Vietnam, attempting to convey through his pictures, through the faces, the gritty reality of what it was like to be in the middle of deadly violence—and then in its often grisly, shocking and ugly aftermath. Burrows and photojournalists like him could not capture on film the “bullets flying through the air” but they were often there in the field dodging those bullets alongside the soldiers, and then went about their job to tell the story of what happened with a sense of compassion and sympathy.
Throughout the Vietnam War, from America’s early involvement on, few could claim that the harsh human realities of the war, the suffering of our soldiers and civilians alike, were hidden from view. Indeed, images of the war, including its blood and gore, were splashed across America’s newspapers, magazines and television screens in great volumes. As our cover story by longtime Associated Press photo editor Hal Buell reminds us, photojournalists’ freedom to get inside the action, virtually anywhere, anytime in Vietnam, and for their pictures to be transmitted and published around the world without official clearance or interference, was unprecedented. Despite the images’ searing and painful depictions, they were critical to informing a free society of the direct consequences of its policies.
As Burrows was quoted in Life magazine’s 1971 tribute to him two weeks after he was killed in Laos: “I’m trying to show other people what is happening here in Vietnam….People here do suffer and if I can convey that in photographs, then I’ve made my point.” Buell, who has authored or edited some 15 books, including Vietnam: A Complete Photographic History and Uncommon Valor, Uncommon Virtue, also examines how that unfettered access in Vietnam has informed and shaped official policies and restrictions of media coverage in America’s conflicts since.
Originally published in the April 2010 issue of Vietnam. To subscribe, click here.
