Philip Jones-Griffiths

I blogged this elsewhere, but I think anybody who has spent any time in Vietnam will appreciate watching this talk by probably the most well respected war photographer of the Vietnam era, Philip Jones-Griffiths. I attended this talk in London a couple of weeks ago. If you think you don't know Philip's work - you probably already do, but just don't realise it. Philip was kind enough to sign a noodlepie card.

Comments

[peter]

Jones Griffiths is a one-trick pony. His Vietnam Inc. is the iconic book of the era feeding into a popular western, mostly American anti-war culture of that time. His 26 visits to Vietnam after 1975 concentrate on the lingering effects of the war. He does not comment on the effects of the communist onslaught on the population of South Vietnam. The few photos on the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who left by boat are downgraded in a typical manner…"they were Chinese mostly and now they are rich". No comments and no Griffith's pictures on those who drowned. Not an artist to remember.

[peter]

One photographer who spent years photographing the horrors of war in Vietnam is Eddie Adams. He received the Pulitzer for his photo of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner during the communist Tet uprising in 1968. Whilst the shot brought him fame, Adams thought it his worst picture ever. [source wikipedia] On Nguyen Ngoc Loan and his famous photograph, Adams wrote in Time:
The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?' Adams later apologized in person to General Nguyen and his family for the irreparable damage it did to Loan's honor while he was alive. When Nguyen died, Adams praised him as a "hero" of a "just cause". Jones Griffiths does not have any such qualms...he perpetuates his 'Vietnam Inc.' successes without much reflection.

Instead he advocated, without much success, that the public appreciate his photos of escaping Vietnamese 'boat people' instead.

[JFM]

Sadly it would seem that PJG has died.

[Graham]

Yup he did Jamie. I blogged about it here:

http://www.fromthefrontline.co.uk/blogs/index.php?blog=5&title=philip_jones_griffiths_1936_2008&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1