Most
of the images made by these photographers were never published. The Vietnam
News Agency in Hanoi tried to distribute them internationally during the
war, but without much success. News agencies in the West either dismissed
the pictures or never saw them. Only a few of the most propagandistic
images were reproduced in pictorial magazines and newspapers in Vietnam,
the Soviet Union, and other communist countries in Eastern Europe. The
rest were sealed in tightly controlled government archives or were kept
in the possession of the photographers themselves. After the war, lack
of outside interest and limited resources kept the photographers from
printing their own work.
This is the first exhibition to bring the work of these forgotten photographers
to light. The images were gathered over the past five years by Doug Niven,
an American photo researcher, from more than thirty Vietnamese photographers
and their families, as well as three government archives. Collectively,
these pictures tell the story of another Vietnam, one very different from
the one we thought we knew.
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| Guerrillas tunnel into the dry soil in the region known as the Iron Triangle, a Viet Cong stronghold bounded by the cities of Tay Ninh, Song Be and Saigon (1966). Photograph by Duong Thanh Phong © National Geographic Society |
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| New recruits to the North Vietnamese army undergo physical examinations, Haiphong (1967). This image is taken from the book, "Another Vietnam," Photograph by Bao Hanh © National Geographic Society |
