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Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina

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As a photographer, I can't say I own "Requiem" out of sheer joy for the greatness of the photographs within. (No one who owns this book will keep it for that reason.) In fact, this is a book that can be at times painful to open up and look at.

Perhaps this reaction is the result of the dual reality one is presented with - not only are the photos depicting (at times) someone being killed, but you also know that the person who took the photograph was also killed. In one photograph you actually see the last photo taken by that journalist before he died.

So why own it? "Reguiem" is a proverbial granite memorial to anyone who was killed in Vietnam - American, South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, whoever. By showing photographs from all sides it is able to maintain a level of objectivity that you won't find in many books. It just hits you with, "Here, this was the reality. Deal with it." Because of this it also acts as a book of history and not just one about photographers and their work.

But still, I think "Requiem" will particularly appeal to anyone who's interested in photography and photojournalism.

I'm reminded of the book "The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War" which is about photographers in South Africa and the fall of Apartheid. The photographers within that book are driven by excitment and adrenaline. They also want their photography to make an impact, to change the world. (A feeling many photojournalists share.) One of the photographers in that book, a man by the name of Kevin Carter who won the Pulitzer Prize winner for his shot of a dying Sudanese child, committed suicide as result of the desperation he felt.

"Requiem" is in some ways a complement to "The Bang-Bang Club" because it shows the ultimate sacrifice war photographers sometimes make in their pursuit of the craft. This makes the book that much more haunting. While some of these photos did alter our perspective on the world, they didn't really change it. So was their sacrifice worth it? You have to open the book to decide for yourself.

A brilliant collection of the work of the true heros of any war -- those who carry notebooks and cameras to record the truth of the moment. Who better than Tim Page to assemble this remarkable work? Page has always been a man of action, a man who continues to seek the facts about two of his closest friends and colleagues, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, who were captured by Vietnamese forces in Svay Rieng, Cambodia, during April 1970, and for whom there has yet to be a "full acounting". Requiem is a stunning tribute to the world's war correspondents and photographers, a true treasure.

Normally I am able to tell a person why I like a book or why I like a movie. However, in this case, I am really not able to say why I thought this book was excellent.

Requiem is a series of photos and stories from various wars in the Indochina region (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia mainly) from the 1950's to the 1970's. Most of the photos were taken by photographers that lost their lives during the various conflicts. The book reads like a magazine, a series of short stories about the region, the war, or about a deceased photographer augmented by photographs of the subject or by the subject.

I was confused about my feelings about the pictures in the book. I do not find any beauty in death, yet I found the photographs in the book are hauntingly beautiful. The pictures in the beginning of the book show calm, surreal scenes from the region. As the book progressed from the 1950's to the Vietnam war, the pictures became more destructive and consumed with death. Some pictures were unbelievable such as the photo by Hiromichi Mine of the plane hit in midair by an artillery shell. Other photos left images burned in my mind such as the photo of the last rights being given to Dixey Chapelle.

After searching for a few days as to why I thought the book was beautiful, I decided on the following: Personally, I have always been intrigued with war. I was never fascinated with the violence much as I was with the people who fought it and why it was fought. I've read a lot of first person accounts from various wars, but in the end, they were all stories. I believe Requiem and its photos tell the story of the people on both sides as well as the civilians caught in the middle. I thought it brought the concept of war out of the world of words on paper and into reality. The people killed were no longer statistics in an encyclopedia, their pictures shows young people with fear in their eyes. Like I mentioned before, it brought the soldiers from the world of words on paper to reality. It showed soldiers helping one another, fighting, tired after the battle, and deceased.

I would highly recommend this book for people interested in the Indochina wars or people interested in the Vietnam War. I think the book serves its purpose better in the hands of a mature audience, where people can look beyond the blood and violence to its hidden meanings.

This book is summarised for me by a quote from David Halberstam .. ' they could not, as we print people could, arrive a little late for the action, be briefed, and then, through the skilled use of interviews and journalism, re-create a scene with stunning accuracy, writing a marvelous you-are-there story that reeked of intimacy even though, in truth, we had missed it all. We could miss the fighting and still do our jobs. They could not.' To be a great combat photographer one had to get CLOSE to the action. That's why so many of them were killed. I spent a total of 15 months in Vietnam, from 1969 through 71. The grunt on the ground viewed reporters skeptically, suspecting that they got a lot of their stories in the bar of The Caravelle Hotel in Saigon. But not the photographers. They were regarded with awe. This book comes as close as can be done to evoking the feeling of the country and the war. My friends describe me as a little to the right of Gengis Khan; I think the book is superb. It has nothing to do with politics, just presenting the truth as best as can be done and honoring a bunch of brave men and women whose performance speaks for itself. If you buy only one book this year, this should be it

Though I am mostly too young to remember much about the Vietnam conflict, this book evoked powerful emotions as I went through it. It is a powerful and haunting tribute to the men and women who died (on both sides) to record this war on film.

As one contributor put it, these images are often the last things these photographers saw before they died and that fact hovers nearby as you look at the pictures and read the stories of these brave men and women.

An exhibit of these photos will be showing at the Kentucky History Center in Frankfort, KY, USA from Oct. 1-Nov. 13, 1999. It is free and open to the public on Tuesdays-Sundays.

Requiem is at one, a compelling pictorial account of the conflict which ravaged Indo-China for so many years and also a fitting testament to the courage and the skill of the photographers who lost their lives there. The first series of photographs by the American, Everette Dixie Resse reveal a land of great beauty and startling serenity. There is gentleness and largesse in these early photographs which one feels is drawn not solely from the ambience and topography of the region itself but must have been present in the heart of the man who took them. Requiem chronicles the course of the war from its' inception in the 1950's to the end of American involvement in the 1970's. The book contains not only the photographs of the more famous photographers such as Robert Capa and Larry Burrows but also those whose names are barely known and whose fate sadly, remain unknown. Many of the latter were the North Vietnamese photographers and I feel that their work goes a long way to explain how this small undeveloped country was able to drive the greatest military machine the world has ever known into eventual submission. There is an energy and determination in the eyes and very demeanour of the Communist soldiers that is not apparent amongst their opponents, the French and the Americans. When one sees Luong Nghia Dung's dramatic pictures of the NVA artillery shelling ARVN positions it is as if the very sinews of the soldiers are propelling the shells to the intended target and ultimate victory. The book is not without its lighter moments, although in truth, these are few and far between. The Japanese photographer, Kyoichi Sawada is pictured presenting a print to a family of a photo that he had taken of them swimming across a river in a successful attempt to flee an American air strike. This was indeed a happy occasion to celebrate a lucky escape. Also there are pictures taken by Henri Huet which capture the good-humoured resilience of two Americans wounded in 1966. One might recall the cliché, "blooded but unbowed" or perhaps "grace under pressure". They do however, manage a smile for Huet's camera. The book contains some fascinating biographical information on the men and women who took these photographs. They are from diverse backgrounds, countries and cultures but regardless of who they were, we are left in no doubt that the quality of a photograph has little to do with the camera but so very much with the eye and soul of the person pressing the shutter.

My wife and I saw the photos from this excellent book at the War Crimes Museum in Ho Chi Minh City in February of 2001. Walked out into the street with tears streaming down our cheeks. Bought the book when we returned to the U.S. and cried again. Simple, evocative, and worth having in the permanent collection. Also, a must-have if you plan on reading The Cat From Hue.

This book is really a monument in memory of all the brave photographers who dedicated their lives to show the real face of war. There are not only great shots, but also very interesting biographic profiles who help us to understand the thinking of the reporters about their work and the extreme situations they were experiencing, staying with the troops on the field. An excellent book for everyone is interested in photoreportage and Vietnam War's history.

The photographs in this book are absolutely mind blowing. They are a creditable testament to the memory of the incredibly brave and talented photographers who did not return from Vietnam and Indochina.

Some of the greatest photographers of all time are listed here. Some of their photographs have remained unseen for some 40 years.
Some of the photographs taken were the last visions seen by photographers who were actually killed whilst in the act of taking them.

The first hand reality of the 'at war' experience is brought home to the unitiated reader. To take these shots the photographers were of a necessity extremely close to the action and sometimes in the very midst of it. For their sacrifice in obtaining these images they lost their lives.

One can only sit back with awe at the scenes illustrated and wonder at the suffering, humanity & sometimes lack of it, that perpetuated these conflicts.

These photographers have done a great service in bringing home the reality of war to those who were not there. An amazing and fitting epitaph to those who fought, suffered and died on both sides.

This is a truly remarkable collection of photos. The essence of so much of the agony of the wars in Vietnam captured on film. This collection has a central macabre link - all the photographers were killed in the war. Tim Page paid his own "dues" in the war including taking a horrific head wound. On arrival at the hospital, he overheard the doctor say that he was going to die. Still obviously haunted by the war, he undertook this project in part as a memorial to his friends, Sean Flynn (the son of Earl, the movie actor) and Dana Stone, who were captured and executed by the Khmer Rouge.

Robert Capa, whose most famous picture was taken during the Spanish Civil War, showing the moment of death of a republican soldier, died by stepping on a land mine, two weeks after the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Larry Burrows was one of the most famous who covered the American war period, and he died in a helicopter crash in 1971 during the Vietnamese offensive against the Ho Chi Minh Trail. There was Francois Sully and Kyoichi Sawada. So many of those that covered the war were not American. All so important for this collection are the Vietnamese photographers such as Luong Nghia Dung and Vo Van Quy, filming those "on the other side."

How many of the photographs deserve the epithet "haunting." At least half. There is Sou Vichith's photo of three captured Khmer "kids" really, two of them women, who will be raped and executed. There is the badly wounded Cambodian boy looking at his dead mother by Tea Kim Heang. Perhaps it is the no one at all, the empty road, being reclaimed by the jungle, with only part of a human spine on it by Taizo Ichinose that captures best the auto-genocide that was the "rule" of the Khmer Rouge.

The book concludes with a fitting epilogue by Neil Sheehan, whose book, "A Bright Shining Lie" best captures in words the folly that is displayed in these pictures. Life magazine, which published numerous of these photographs, taken by those working on the American side, no longer exists. The power of the still photograph is not being used to convey the horrors of the Iraq war. This book should be compulsory viewing for the kids of today who learn nothing of the true nature of war from their video games. It might even move one of the hearts of the neo-cons who eschewed military service during this war.