Vietnam (Post 1 of 2)

Vietnam was a port where we lived with the constant specter of the "American War" or as we are used to hearing it, the Vietnam War.

I travelled extensively throughout Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and was given constant reminders of our past actions in the country. One of the most poignant and propagandistic of these moments was in the War Remnants Museum; this museum featured a plentitude of disturbing and dark "truths" about America's action in the war. What was particularly disturbing was seeing propagandistic language merge with curatorial convention. Photographs that we are used to seeing (and were captured by western journalists) were re-captioned for exhibition. A photo of a man being removed from his home was captioned "a girl pleads with GI's to "please not kill my father"". There was also a horrifying floor dedicated to the damage caused by our use of Dioxin based chemicals like Agent Orange to deforest Viet-Cong controlled jungle.

Below are a few photos from the museum:





Above you can see the type of images culled from the enormous milieu of images representing American policy in the mid 20th century. A bias perhaps?



A wonderful installation of Larry Burrow's "Yankee Papa 13" (Photo Essay from Time Magazine here: http://ti.me/KTRzgc)


The museum was very simply stacked. It laid a political base ground floor, then began to examine the conflict itself as visitors went to the second and third floors.





I'll be writing another post that has more images from the city itself as well as our journey by motorbike through the countryside to the Cu Chi tunnels.