US war photo expose debuts

Vietnam News Agency photojournalist Chu Chi Thanh has published a photographic account of the American War, with introductions and footnotes in English and Vietnamese.
Entitled Memories of the War, photographs in the book were taking in North Viet Nam between 1967 and 1973. Many of the photographs have yet to be seen by the public.
Thanh said he wanted to remind young people across the world not only of the suffering and hardship that was experienced during the war, but also the heroism and magnanimity.
He said he also wanted to give American veterans an honest no-holds-barred account of the war, which began in 1954 and ended in 1975.
"I myself learnt a lot about the war through the lens of a young war photographer who was little more than 20 years old at the time and experienced the war from a Vietnamese perspective," Thanh says.
The artistic power of the photographs in the book lies in their unembellished warts-and-all honesty, poet Huu Thinh says.
"Through it, we can see both artistic creativity and publicity. It is a factual account and yet at the same time it represents the soul of an artist."
With the support of HCM City Museum of War Remnants, photos in Thanh’s book have been exhibited in a number of southern provinces and cities over the last two years, with visitor numbers reaching 500,000 annually, according to Huynh Ngoc Van, the museum’s director.
"From the critical viewpoint of the lens and Thanh’s access as a war correspondent to all corners of the North, we can truly see and experience, as he did, the American air war of destruction against northern Viet Nam from the 17th parallel northwards," Van says.
At the end of the book, Thanh included private letters written by family members, friends and colleagues, which give a further incite into the war-time sentiments of those unwillingly caught up n the struggle for freedom.