Perhaps it was because
he was a foreign observer in a far-off war. Maybe he just saw things
more clearly than most people. Ultimately, he showed the American
public the real horrors of the Vietnam war.
Welsh
Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths saw Vietnam as a "goldfish
bowl where the values of American and Vietnamese can be observed,
studied, and because of their contrasting nature, more easily appraised."
Griffiths's images were some of the first to clearly
show the mismatch of American soldiers in a place
they didn't belong. America had became lost in a conflict
run by a government which had lost its perspective
about its place in the world.
View the photographs from his landmark book and an interview
he made about his work with writer and former Magnum director Bob
Dannin. The captions with the photographs are
excerpted from Jones Griffiths's original captions in Vietnam
Inc. A new printed edition of Vietnam Inc. is also currently
available, as well as a
rare copy of his original edition from Pawprint Books.
