The decade-long Vietnam War (1964-75) was the most photographed conflict in history. Throughout the war, hundreds of photojournalists provided Western media outlets with a constant stream of unforgettable war images. Yet few in the West were aware that the Communist side had produced its own photographic account of the war. Official news agencies of the North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong in the South dispatched over 100 photographers to thoroughly document their revolution. Other photographers worked for domestic publications like Viet-Nam Pictorial and the North Vietnamese Army newspaper, and a few worked for themselves.

Avowedly partisan, these image-makers trained their lenses on scenes of dramatic action and fierce resistance that could be used to inspire their countrymen and build international support for their cause. They avoided the wrenching images of death and terror that saturated the West, and focused instead on subjects scarcely represented in other Vietnam War photographs: the war’s incalculable toll on Vietnamese civilian life, its catastrophic damage to the land, and the day-to-day operation of a grass-roots guerilla war. Their pictures also depict what photojournalists from the West could not--men and women prepared to fight and die for the liberation of their country from the U.S. military and the South Vietnamese government.