Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War From the Other Side

Military Review,  March-April, 2004  by Kevin L. Jamison

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ANOTHER VIETNAM: Pictures of the War From the Other Side, Tim Page, Douglas Niven, Christopher Riley, eds., National Geographic, Washington, DC, 2002, 240 pages, $50.00.

In Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War From the Other Side, the editors, who were combat photographers during the Vietnam war, contacted their counterparts in the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA), and rescued unpublished images that showed the other side of the war. Photos range from troupes of entertainers to combat footage. The book is valuable because of the rarity of its subject; one source shot only 70 individual pictures during the entire course of the war.

The truly interesting aspect of the book is that the editors believe that since their sources were also combat photographers, they shared a worldview and purpose. The U.S. photographers were accustomed to conveying the war's reality. The Vietcong and NVA photographers were trained under a socialist-realist school and sought to convey the party's view of reality. Even the combat photos show heroic, ever-victorious revolutionaries. There are no pictures of dead Vietcong, except for the obligatory dead child. This is not to suggest that the photos were staged, only that the photographers were trained to produce only photos that supported the propaganda message. These images were the major weapon of the enemy forces. The editors seem to fail to understand them in that context.

Kevin L. Jamison, Attorney at Law,

Gladstone, Missouri

COPYRIGHT 2004 U.S. Army CGSC
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning