Saigon Execution photographed by Eddie Adams, 1968: WEEKLY DISCUSSION #22.

<p>On a Saigon street at the start of the Tet offensive, a handcuffed Vietcong prisoner named Nguyen Van Lem was brought to Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the South Vietnamese national police. Loan executed the prisoner, and at the same time he fired his pistol, photojournalist Eddie Adams clicked his shutter.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.utexas.edu/news/files/di_05291.jpg">The photograph</a> earned Adams a Pulitzer Prize, and it has become an iconic image from the Vietnam war. It is also credited with changing attitudes about the war. The photo linked to above appears to be an uncropped version; I often see it with the person on the right cropped. <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h-8AXVo0dEI/UhO8_aqqYeI/AAAAAAAABRw/FiLkY3GjgLk/s1600/Nguyen_Van_Lem_big.jpg">Here</a> is a larger version.</p>

<p>The photo shows a brutal and horrific war scene, and an understandable response to it is that summary executions of handcuffed prisoners are intolerable. Adams suggested that photos can lie, even unmanipulated ones, and that having a factual back story and appreciation of the situation might alter one’s perception.</p>

<p>Adams felt that the photo was taken by reflex and wasn’t particularly good, and in fact it overshadowed some of his other work that he thought was better. He didn’t understand the reaction to it and he regretted the negative response it caused toward Nguyen Ngoc Loan.</p>

<p>There was a film crew at the scene, and they also recorded the execution. It is Adams’s still photo that is better known, however. It has been said that the still photo is more powerful than the motion picture because the viewer can linger on the exact moment of death, clearly registering the gun and the facial expressions. The footage is part of a <a href="http://www.onlinefootage.tv/stock-video-footage/2023/1968-the-saigon-execution-general-nguyen-ngoc-loan-summarily-executes-nguyen-van-lem">video</a> with editorial commentary (8min11sec, warning – very graphic).</p>

<p>The presence of cameras can alter people’s behavior. It has been suggested that the execution took place because the media were there. It’s hard to say how the cameras influenced Loan. Given their proximity, he must have been aware of them.</p>

<p>I hope that in addition to the points I’ve outlined as discussion-starters, people will have stories about how this picture affected them when they first saw it, and if their perspective has changed since then.</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Adams_%28photographer%29">Here</a> is some info about Adams.<br>

Adams speaks about the photo <a href="http://www.newseum.org/exhibits-and-theaters/permanent-exhibits/pulitzer/videos/1969-spot-news-edward-adams--the-associated-press.html">here.</a><br>

An <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102112403">NPR story</a> about Adams and the photo.</p>

 

<p>It was easily the most shocking photo I'd ever seen up to then and is still in the top 5 or so shocking photos I've ever seen. Looking at the interview clip and how Adams was able to simply dismiss it and go to lunch says a lot about how hardened you have to be to keep doing that kind of work. I've photographed more than a few ugly things over the years but have never been able to distance myself from it as much. Interesting too that he did work he felt was much better and more important. I guess history makes those determinations. How can those of us on the sidelines can stand in judgement. <br /><br />Rick H.</p>

<p>My plea to everyone who reads this thread - read the backstory, too:<br>

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/03/the-story-behind-the-man-who-was-killed-in-the-famous-saigon-execution-photo/<br>

(The man who was shot was virtually certainly responsible for the murder of 34 South Vietnamese cops and members of their families). This in no way detracts from the fact that the pic shows an illegal extrajudicial killing and that it had an enormous impact on the attitude of the US public to the war. It communicates brutality in the most direct way possible.<br>

At the same time, I imagine this picture has been shown to students at military staff colleges ever since, along with the observation that the US military authorities were so gung-ho and sure of their cause that they allowed journalists unrestricted access to the entire theater of war, resulting in the worst possible publicity, while the North Vietnamese kept an iron grip on journalistic activity, with the result that the most memorable pic from the North Vietnamese side (almost the only one anyone remembers) was of Jane Fonda sitting on a triple-A mount. An absolutely iconic image, and a crucial one in 20th century history.</p>

<p>This may be a shocking image, even knowing the history of the victim, but it is just the surface of many human relations with others. It is nothing compared to the misery of the Holocaust, the Rwandan massacres and even the killing of civilians by imprecise bombing raids in World War 2 or in the later bombing of villages in North Vietnam. Did it really change anything in the context of what we know (other than the effect on General Loan)? Sorry if I am responsible for a not very uplifting thought on Easter Sunday.</p>

<p><em>... the effect on General Loan ...</em><br>

... was being forced to make a living selling pizza (!):<br>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_Ng%E1%BB%8Dc_Loan<br>

As the saying goes - truth is stranger than fiction!</p>

<p>I personally found the image of the "napalm girl" more influential in the formation of my concepts at the time.<br /> http://news.yahoo.com/ap-napalm-girl-photo-vietnam-war-turns-40-210339788.html<br /> As for Jane Fonda (<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=jane+fonda+aa+gun&num=100&newwindow=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=rfVTU_rWFMepyATvlILgDQ&ved=0CCcQsAQ&biw=1831&bih=1306">link</a>) - that role was even better than Barbarella for me. ;)</p>

<p>I'm sorry for not being more "involved"; but, even though it's a long time ago, the same old arguments still reemerge, perhaps even comforting in their immutability.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Well, it is "HUMANITY" as we know it from the time of the present and past recorded history, The list would be very long if we like to show in the last 100 years, every side atrocities, nobody innocent. The only thing is, the history written by the victorious all the time. In the main time, those whom providing the hardware, rubbing they had in delight, making unimaginable profit. That's the reason, they invented the never ending wars. Never was more profitable business in the world as wars.</p>

<p>Eddie Adams frequently regretted having taking this staged photo. I regret having seen it. It is dehumanizing. </p>

<p>Just to dig our head under the sand, the world do not going to change or disappear. Just because we don't know something, it not necessarily do not exist. But, for keep our sanity, sometime better if we don't know many things.</p>

<p>Because it's Easter: Dr. Martin Luther King's survey of the facts <a href="http://antiwar.com/orig/bromwich.php?articleid=12844">http://antiwar.com/orig/bromwich.php?articleid=12844</a>:<br /></p>

<blockquote>

<p> </p>

<p><em>"So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.<br /></em><br>

<em> </em></p>

<p><em>"What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?"</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p><em> </em><br>

and<em><br /></em></p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. </em></p>

</blockquote>

<p><em> </em></p>

<p>Thank you Charles, thank you very much.<br>

Somebody has the brain courage and logic to show us the real nature of us, the real twisted, degraded HUMANITY. Or, who ever among us?</p>

Now, extrajudicial killings are carried out by using pilotless drones guided by unknown people thousands of miles away

and THERE ARE NO PHOTOGRAPHERS PRESENT to show us the horrors we allow our leaders to cause.

<blockquote>

<p><em>"I hope that in addition to the points I’ve outlined as discussion-starters, people will have stories about how this picture affected them when they first saw it, and if their perspective has changed since then."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Mark, my reaction to the photo years ago was probably not much different from most others. <br>

<br>

My perspective has most certainly changed over the past few years, in particular I'm beginning to question the Pulitzer Prize as a conduit to fame by way of documenting human tragedy and atrocities. These types of photos are no longer about raising consciousness of conflict or suffering, rather they've become celebrated highbrow art to be gawked at by the chin-stroking art crowd in galleries and exhibits. <br>

<br>

Maybe we've become increasingly desensitized through the proliferation of citizen journalism and available content similar to, or even more graphic than the subject photo. As much as war is obsolete as a means of human conflict resolution, Pulitzer Prize awards to these photos have become, in my view equally inappropriate and obsolete. <br>

<a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=pulitzer+prize+photos&rlz=1C1CHFX_enCA521CA521&es_sm=122&tbm=isch#q=pulitzer+prize+photos+2013&tbm=isch">https://www.google.ca/search?q=pulitzer+prize+photos&rlz=1C1CHFX_enCA521CA521&es_sm=122&tbm=isch#q=pulitzer+prize+photos+2013&tbm=isch</a> - 2013 Pulitzer Prize photos <br>

</p>

<p>http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2013/12/kevin-carter-committed-suicide-3-months.html</p>

<p>I turned sixty-nine years old yesterday, and I awoke this morning wondering what my purpose in this life is at this point. Seeing these photos reminded me. They also throw into dramatic relief the insignificant nature of my own sufferings--at least no one has tried to kill me yet, and I am comfortable in my near poverty--all poverty is relative, and I realize that I am, after all, more or less secure.</p>

<p>As many times as I have seen the photos of the execution (1968) and of the burned young girl (1972), seeing them today burst upon me with renewed force and horror. I have not been desensitized in the least by having seen them or others before.</p>

<p>I am reminded as to what my purpose has been and must remain: to keep writing against war until the end of my days, whether anyone reads my work or not.</p>

<p>These photos are finally not only about other persons. They are about all of us and the world that we live in.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>The real power of the photograph lies in its capturing the real flavor of the Vietnam war. First and foremost, the image obviously documents a summary execution. Whether it was staged or not, this is about as real as it gets. There's also sidebar, if you will. Notice the uniformed soldier to the left of the executioner; he appears to be communicating with someone not involved with the execution. And here's a civilian racing across the street, obviously oblivious to the horror the world since has witnessed. In other words, the chaos the war brought to Vietnam went on, business as usual.</p>

<p>Thanks for the post, Mark. It serves as a powerful reminder of events the world seems to have forgotten.</p>

<p>Thank you, Bela. In some ways that is the most powerful shot of all.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>It's interesting to compare what's going on in the Adams photo with what Fukase was doing with his raven photos.</p>

<p>Adams, by many accounts, seemed oblivious to the horrific magnitude and potential effects of what he shot. He photographed and went to lunch. Business as usual. War as usual. He was there and he got it and that's no small feat. And he shot it well, caught not only the action of the subjects but the environment of war and the feel of place, the lightness of the sky against the heaviness of the human catastrophe.</p>

<p>Fukase wasn't a journalist, wasn't documenting anything, and involved himself in his photography in a more intentionally self-aware way. He was emoting through photography, maybe seeking some catharsis but, in any case, at least using it as an outlet for his own feelings of loss and alienation. </p>

<p>No pretty pictures here. No pleasing images. No PN rates of 6 or above, almost guaranteed. Too grimy!</p>

<p>So what in the world do this photo of Adams and the ravens of Fukase have in common? Nothing but their dark sides. Raw compositions and gritty esthetics. Murky shadows. Strong contrasts. Raw emotion. Where Adams is journalism Fukase is art. Where Adams is narrative Fukase is figurative, symbolic, expressionist. The response to the Adams photo is a response to fact (staged or otherwise). It is a response to content, to subject matter, to story. The response to Fukase is to an abstraction of feeling not limited to the narrative of the ravens.</p>

<p>In Fukase, I experience an essential feeling of alienation, as if the specific content has been hollowed out. It's boiled down, represented more abstractly, in about as personal a way as possible. In the Adams photo, I am seeing the horror of history and alienation taken to a human extreme.</p>

<p>Fukase shoots inwardly toward a personal horror. Adams shoots away from himself to a more universal, worldly horror.</p>

<p>The Adams photo is a good argument for not giving too much sway to the intentions of the photographer. When reading Adams, it becomes sadly apparent that he regrets that his photo, even in its "staged" honesty, had an anti-war effect and put a serviceman in a bad light. The ironies abound. Thankfully, once a photo is public, it's out of the control of the photographer. And so it is that a photo takes on a life of its own, whether by its revelations or by its use as a wake-up call or a protest or even as propaganda. Dehumanizing? Of course it is. That's the essence of the photo, whether Adams intended it to be or not.</p>

 

<p>This photo, for me, represents and recalls my own guilt for not doing more to stop the war sooner. Demonstrations, strikes, certainly my earliest votes made little difference to hawkish American administrations that didn't care one bit. It is dehumanizing or it might be about as human a photo as there is . . . unfortunately.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"Thank you, Bela. In some ways that is the most powerful shot of all."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I would tend to agree if it was about grading photos, which unfortunately is what war photography has become. <br>

<br>

If one really wanted the raw truth, go on YouTube and have a look at the raw phone-videos out of Syria taken by fighters from both sides where every killing, execution, and unspeakable torture involves real human victims recorded on footage that will never win a Pulitzer Prize. </p>

<p>For all the 2003 Pulitzer Prize photos linked above, there are 274,000 signed petitions on the White House website to deport Justin Bieber and only 18,000 on the atrocities occurring in Syria. <br>

<a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/deport-justin-bieber-and-revoke-his-green-card/ST1yqHJL">https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/deport-justin-bieber-and-revoke-his-green-card/ST1yqHJL</a><br>

<a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/recognize-atrocities-occurring-kessab/9gzBXSkl">https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/recognize-atrocities-occurring-kessab/9gzBXSkl</a></p>

 

<p>Michael I saw the video of that execution on the evening news in 1968, as did many of my young 14 and 15 year old friends. We weren't grading that photograph, and the photograph made us feel and think; and at 14 or 15 the manner of expressions we had were quite limited as one would expect of those so young, affected deeply despite all the affectations of being that age and our inability to communicate well. The photograph made us relive the video from the evening news that showed the blood coming out of the guys head like from a hose. The photo was beyond the control of the intention of the photographer, and it is beyond the control of any one person to judge those who today view such photographs taken now, beyond us to know or judge whether in them or not is as much feeling and thought as back then.</p>

<p>Don't want to compare this photo to any other or from different wars, but the editors saw the incredible irony where US supported a regime, that engaged in dehumanizing acts....not to mention totally against Geneva Convention. This and other photos + documentaries gave the anti-war folk plenty of ammo (excuse the pun)....revealing how crazy and propagandized this war became. No doubt that the photo from Ohio State or photos of thousands of body bags/cemetery crosses returning from 'Nam just added more fuel + public support to end the war, subsequently putting pressure on the administration. </p>

<p>Yet, despite the graphic news reportage and nightly drama on the TV (from the 3 networks), Adams somehow still feels that it was a "just war". The media and the public can be manipulated, but for some reason (and sadly) he didn't have the clarity to recognize the banality of actions that were unraveling in the front of him.</p>

<p>Les</p>

 

<p>Well said, Leszek. Well said.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>It was a "powerful shot" indeed, Michael--without having a drop of blood in it:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2013/12/kevin-carter-committed-suicide-3-months.html">(link)</a></p>

<p>All over the world, poverty and famine are killing more people than wars every day, but they do not always get the most coverage. Sometimes the famine results from war. Sometimes it doesn't.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>This photo does not call for our commentary. It stands on its own, as a hideous reflection of what we, humanity, are capable of doing. It has always haunted me.</p>