howtoseewithoutacamera:

1965-1975: Another Vietnam. Unseen images of the war from the winning side

Equipment
and supplies were precious. Processing chemicals were mixed in tea
saucers with stream water, and exposed film was developed under the
stars. One photographer, Tram Am, only had a single roll of film, 70
frames, for the duration of the war.

Faced with the constant threat of death by bombing, gunfire or the
environment, these photographers documented combat, civilian life,
troops on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, resistance movements in the Mekong
Delta, and the bloody impact of the war on the innocent.

Some were photographing to document history, while others strove to
use their cameras as weapons in the propaganda war. Shooting
clandestinely in the South, Vo Anh Khanh could never get his photos to
Hanoi, but exhibited them in the mangrove swamps of the Mekong Delta to
inspire resistance.

Many of these photographs have rarely been seen in Vietnam, let alone
in the rest of the world. In the early 1990s, photojournalists Tim Page
and Doug Niven started tracking down surviving photographers. One had a
dusty bag of never-printed negatives, and another had his stashed under
the bathroom sink. Vo Anh Khanh still kept his pristine negatives in a
U.S. ammunition case, with a bed of rice as a desiccant.

One hundred eighty of these unseen photos and the stories of the courageous men who made them are collected in the book Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side.

1. September 1965. Using overhead targets, a militia company practices
   firing ahead of speeding aircraft in Thanh Tri. Even using antiquated
   WWII rifles such as these, the Vietnamese were able to cripple or down
   many U.S. aircraft. This militia group, Company #6 of the Yen My
   Commune, earned the title of “Excellent Militia” three years in a row. Image: Minh Dao
2. 1973. Construction workers discuss repairs of the bombed
   out Ham Rong Bridge, in central North Vietnam. The only route across the
   Ma River for heavy trucks and machinery, the bridge was heavily
   defended, and several U.S. planes were shot down nearby. An American MIA
   search team found pilot remains there. Image: Unknown Photographer
3. 1966. Troops walk the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the Truong Son
   Mountains, which form the 750-mile-long spine of Vietnam, stretching
   along much of the country’s western border. To the soldiers of the
   North, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was known as the Truong Son Road. Image: Le Minh Truong
4. March 1971. Laotian guerrillas haul supplies by elephant and foot
   to NVA troops near Route 9 in southern Laos during South Vietnam’s
   attempted interdiction of the trail. The invasion, Operation Lam Son
   719, was intended to test ARVN’s ability as U.S. support was winding
   down. It proved disastrous, with Southern troops fleeing in panic. Image: Doan Cong Tinh
5. Sept. 15, 1970. A victim of American bombing, ethnic Cambodian
   guerrilla Danh Son Huol is carried to an improvised operating room in a
   mangrove swamp on the Ca Mau Peninsula. This scene was an actual medical
   situation, not a publicity setup. The photographer, however, considered
   the image unexceptional and never printed it. Image: Vo Anh Khanh
6. 1972. NVA soldiers dash across open ground near strategic
   Highway 9 in southern Laos during Operation Lam Son 719, the South’s
   failed attempt to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Image: Nguyen Dinh Uu
7. April 30, 1975. Combat boots litter the road on the outskirts of
   Saigon, abandoned by ARVN soldiers who shed their uniforms to hide their
   status. “I’ll never forget the shoes and the loud ‘thump, thump, thump’
   sound as we drove over them,” recalled the photographer. “Decades of
   war were over and we finally had peace.” Image: Duong Thanh Phong
8. May 1975. Elders from North and South embrace, having lived to see Vietnam reunited and unoccupied by foreign powers. Image: Vo Anh Khanh

“We had to be extremely careful because we had limited amounts of film
that had been distributed to us by our paper. For us, one photo was like
a bullet. […] We were more alive in wartime, working in the border between life and death.”
~
Nguyen Dinh Uu

“The
vast dark forest was my giant darkroom. In the morning I’d rinse the
prints in a stream and then hang them from trees to dry. In the
afternoon I’d cut them to size and do the captions. I’d wrap the prints
and negatives in paper and put them in a plastic bag, which I kept close
to my body. That way the photos would stay dry and could be easily
found if I got killed.”
~ Lam Tan Tai

“We
even came up with a new form of flash photography to illuminate our
fighters and villagers who were living in bomb shelters and tunnels. We
emptied gunpowder from rifle cartridges onto a small handheld device and
then lit the gunpowder with a match. The burning powder provided all
the light we needed.”
~ Mai Nam

“I
was certainly not taking photos for their aesthetic appeal. I was not
thinking of beauty. Burned and shattered homes and dead bodies are not
pretty. Any pretense of aesthetics was replaced by our purpose of
recording the war.”
~ Duong Thanh Phong

[via]

Vietman war