Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side [Hardcover]

Tim Page (Author), Senator Max Cleland (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2002

Since the end of the war over 25 years ago, Vietnam has haunted America. Today, many people remember the war as a series of terrible pictures - taken by courageous civilian and military photographers. But there are other images of the war that we have rarely seen. These are the pictures taken by the other side, the Vietnamese, the enemy. Pictures of a peasant people fighting the most powerful nation on earth - and finally defeating it. In this book, we meet the Vietnamese soldier-photographers who risked their lives to capture their country's struggle in evocative, stunning images. For them, photography was a weapon used to win the war. Nine out of ten Vietnamese photographers were taken by bullets, bombs, dysentery, and malaria. Page returns to understand the spirit and dedication of these men, and to commemorate the sacrifice and loss of both sides. This is a new visual record of the war whose images have become so familiar. Through interviews with these photographers, and through their surprising images, a fresh per-spective emerges on the most troubling and divisive foreign war ever fought by the United States.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The groundbreaking publication Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side is an intense collection of images, many never seen before, from the cameras of North Vietnamese photographers. Each included photographer has a chapter highlighting his personal stories and captivating pictures. The stories are riveting and sometimes ironic: one revolutionary photographer falsified identification cards for Communist fighters, another traveled side by side with guerrillas, while another barely escaped a bombing campaign only to be forever haunted by the loss of his film and equipment.

With almost no resources, a serious lack of film, and outdated equipment, these committed photographers used will and determination in order to record history. From film processed under a night sky with homemade chemicals to making one roll of film last for years, each individual tale is a testament to the power of perseverance. Some of the pictures are haunting (a devastated landscape with the intense flare of napalm, an emergency surgery in a mangrove swamp), while others capture a seemingly staged Communist resolve (smiling soldiers with little children, classic hero poses shot from below). This book offers an important pictorial viewpoint and fills in many gaps from the popular Western media coverage of the war. --J.P. Cohen

From Publishers Weekly

Few aspects of the American war in Vietnam have escaped close inspection in this country. So it is startling to see a large, coffee-table book filled with 180 black and white images of that war that have never before been published on these shores. Taken by North Vietnamese photographers, the pictures are a mixture of staged, unabashed propaganda ("I wanted my pictures to be a weapon," says photographer Mai Nam, a longtime Vietnamese Communist Party member) and evocative insights into the way the war appeared from the other side, as when National Liberation Front political leader Ut Mot is shown in an austere underground bunker, light streaming in from a tiny skylight, looking pensive and determined. Accomplished British journalist Page provides running commentary on the war, and the photographers' experiences and reminiscences, particularly those who worked with the Vietcong guerrillas in the South. The book lives up to its billing as a piece of work that will help Americans more fully understand the nation's longest and most controversial overseas war. However, the many photos of smiling North Vietnamese and Vietcong and of captured, wounded and dead South Vietnamese and Americans surely will not warm the hearts of unreconstructed hawks. (Jan.)Forecast: An exhibit featuring more than 150 photos from the book will be held at New York City's International Center of Photography, January-March, and a documentary featuring Page's interviews will air on National Geographic Explorer on MSNBC in January. The book will appeal to the curious and the completist, but may not cross over to greater boomer-based sales.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (February 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792264657
• ISBN-13: 978-0792264651
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 10.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,257,607 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Photo Essay, March 29, 2002

By 

Frank Lee "Pasha" (Aliso Viejo, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side (Hardcover)

As a former Marine Corps combat photographer and recipient of the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Combat "V," (I Corps, Khe Sahn, Con Thein, Dong Ha, Vietnam), Peter Caldwell missed the point about the book. The book was not produced to glorify the NVA or the politics (which enough has been written), but simply to add another piece to a broad visual mozaic. Dr. Caldwell would certainly be hard pressed to attend the International Assn of Combat Photographers. Its membership include former Nazi photographers. In our world as combat photographers, then as now, our role was to document war, to present images however controversal or appealing, to the public. Sometimes these images can be bitter medicine for both sides...just like the images of My Lai.

Tim Page did an excellent job compiling a visual treasure of the North Vietnamese photographers. And as a former combat photographer, I was stunned to view their work. Other distinguished photographers and correspondents like Larry Burrows, Bernard Falls, Henry Huet, Sean Flynn, Dana Stone -- to name a few who I had the pleasure to meet and work with and all were killed in Southeast Asia, they would hold this book in high regard. After all, as combat correspondents we did not judge but observed. And that's what this book is all about.

SSgt. F. Lee
Combat Photographer ('66-67)

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars very interesting, February 25, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side (Hardcover)

With all due respect to Peter Caldwell, I think this book has a lot of value for all Americans, including Vietnam veterans. There are some photos which are propaganda, but they are labelled as such and as the author explains they are part of a larger story. All wars come with propaganda, even our own present war in Afghanistan (remember the US Special Forces soldiers riding horses with the Northern Alliance guys?) The other photos in this handsome book are stunning, especially a very wide panorama of a terribly defoliated Ho Chi Minh Trail. Very touching portraits elsewhere as well as dramatic battle scenes, in addition to the brief histories of the Vietnamese war photographers (in their own words) make this a very valuable and important book. There is something inside for everyone, just dig a little deeper past your first reaction...

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars quite interesting and enlightening, August 1, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side (Hardcover)

This is a tough book to sum up in a few words, since many people will use their background to judge it. If you felt we should have won the war, you will hate it. I was forced to serve in VietNam and I found the pictures very interesting. More than just the US era in VietNam, the photos go back to WWII. There are pictures of the Ho Chi Mih trail which vividly show the difficulty in shutting off that supply line. There are pictures of what the US now calls 'collateral damage' from the bombing in the North. There are some propaganga photos, but they are so stated. But far and away there are photos showing the everyday life of those involved in combat, and for that it is a very valuable book. It is a documentation from the other side. Considering how our drill instructors were wont to describe the other side as a bunch of pj'ed peasants, the quality of the photos is first rate. I can not begin to imagine the conditions under which many of the photos were taken, let alone survived to be developed. If you have an open mind about the war, you will enjoy the book. If you already have decided about the war and felt we were suppsoed to have won 'if only....', then I am sure there are lots of gung ho war movies and books for sale on Amazon.com that will better suit your mindset.