Early Photography in Vietnam is a fascinating and outstanding pictorial record of photography in Vietnam during the century of French rule. In more than 500 photographs, many published here for the first time, the volume records Vietnam's capture and occupation by the French, the wide-ranging ethnicities and cultures of Vietnam, the country's fierce resistance to foreign rule, leading to the reassertion of its own identity and subsequent independence. This benchmark volume also includes a chronology of photography (1845-1954), an index of more than 240 photographers and studios in the same period, appendixes focusing on postcards, royal photographic portraits, Cartes de Visite and Cabinet Cards, as well as a select bibliography and list of illustrations.
Between the French Indochina war of the fifties and the fall of Phnom Penn and Saigon in 1975, 134 photographers from different nations were killed. Horst Faas, two-times Pullitzer Prize winner and Chief Photographer for The Associated Press in Saigon at the height of the war, and Tim Page, another veteran who had been badly wounded, have gathered many thousands of photos from the Western agencies and from archives in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. These have now been assembled to form both a monument to the dead and a record of the most terrifying war photography ever taken. Never again will the media have the kind of access to the war zone that was offered to the photographers in Vietnam. In many cases the photographers tried to get as close as possible, then paid the price.
This book is the first extensive survey of early Chinese photographers in any language. It is profusely illustrated with more than 400 photographs, many of which are published here for the first time, including a fine selection of Foochow landscapes from the studios of Lai Fong, China's leading photographer during this period, and Tung Hing. Early chapters introduce the historical milieu from which the earliest Chinese photographers emerged and illuminate the beginnings of photography in China and contemporary Chinese reactions to its introduction. Early Chinese commercial photography - both portrait and landscape - are also discussed with reference to similar genres in a more international context. Individual chapters are devoted to Chinese photographers in Peking, Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, Amoy, Hankow, Tientsin and other ports, Macau and Formosa. These are followed by a series of appendices: writings on photography in China by John Thomson and Isaac Taylor Headland and an invaluable guide to the identification of photographs from the Afong Studio. It concludes with an extensive bibliography, general and regional chronologies, and a biographical index. Publisher's note.
Photography in Japan 1853-1912 is a fascinating visual record of Japanese culture during its metamorphosis from a feudal society to a modern, industrial nation at a time when the art of photography was still in its infancy. The 350 rare and antique photos in this book, most of them published here for the first time, chronicle the introduction of photography in Japan and early Japanese photography. The images are more than just a history of photography in Japan; they are vital in helping to understand the dramatic changes that occurred in Japan during the mid-nineteenth century. These rare Japanese photographs--whether sensational or everyday, intimate or panoramic--document a nation about to abandon its traditional ways and enter the modern era. Taken between 1853 and 1912 by the most important Japanese and foreign photographers working in Japan, this is the first book to document the history of early photography in Japan a comprehensive and systematic way.
A magazine photographer in civilian life, Mark Jury was assigned to the U.S. Army Headquarters Information Office at Long Binh during the Vietnam War. With blanket travel orders and the Army's top press card, he spent his year-long tour of duty traveling around Vietnam and Cambodia photographing the war. This book, first published soon after his return from Vietnam, is a collection of affecting images that illuminate the human cost of the Vietnam War.
See firsthand how war photography is used to sway public opinion. In the autumn of 2014, the Royal Air Force released blurry video of a missile blowing up a pick-up truck which may have had a weapon attached to its flatbed. This was a lethal form of gesture politics: to send a £9-million bomber from Cyprus to Iraq and back, burning £35,000 an hour in fuel, to launch a smart missile costing £100,000 to destroy a truck or, rather, to create a video that shows it being destroyed. Some lives are ended—it is impossible to tell whose—so that the government can pretend that it taking effective action by creating a high-budget snuff movie. This is killing for show. Since the Vietnam War the way we see conflict—through film, photographs, and pixels—has had a powerful impact on the political fortunes of the campaign, and the way that war has been conducted. In this fully illustrated and passionately argued account of war imagery, Julian Stallabrass tells the story of post-war conflict, how it was recorded and remembered through its iconic photography. The relationship between war and photograph is constantly in transition, forming new perspectives, provoking new challenges: what is allowed to be seen? Does an image have the power to change political opinion? How are images used to wage war? Stallabrass shows how photographs have become a vital weapon in the modern war: as propaganda—from close-quarters fighting to the drone’s electronic vision—as well as a witness to the barbarity of events such as the My Lai massacre, the violent suppression of insurgent Fallujah or the atrocities in Abu Ghraib. Through these accounts Stallabrass maps a comprehensive theoretical re-evaluation of the relationship between war, politics and visual culture. Killing for Show offers: 190 photographs encompassing photojournalism, artists’ images, photographs by soldiers and amateurs and drones A comprehensive comparison of the role of photography in the Vietnam and Iraq Wars An explanation of the waning power of iconic images in collective memory An analysis of the failure of military PR and the public display of killing A focus on what can and cannot be seen, photographed and published An exploration of the power and limits of amateur photography Arguments about how violent images act on democracy This full-color book is an essential volume in the history of warfare and photography
These and a hundred other images are seared into our consciousness - but a very different viewpoint appears in this vision of three decades of war in Vietnam.".
The Vietnam War gave rise to a brand new kind of journalism: photojournalism. Iconic photographs such as Napalm Girl not only changed journalism forever but also changed the minds of many Americans about their country's involvement in the war. This book contextualizes the war and demonstrates how modes of reporting can change the course of history.
