“All
photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions…alter the
caption: alter the use of these deaths.”
~Susan
Sontag, Looking at War, 2002
For
my final reflection, I have decided to look into the meaning of photojournalism
and how archivists mean to capture the original journalistic context a single
photograph was placed. The question I
seek to answer is whether or not the catalog record of a digital repository
properly reflects the photojournalist aspects of an image?
The photograph I have chosen for this study is Nick
Ut’s iconic photograph of children fleeing the village of Trảng Bàng in
Vietnam. I chose this image for three main reasons:
Firstly,
because it is an excellent example of war photography during the Vietnam War. The
means by which war was documented shifted during the Vietnam War and it became
the norm for newspapers to publish war photographs which would have previously
been suppressed due to their shocking details.[1]
The Vietnam War was not popular with the American public and photojournalism
was a powerful means to shock people with the true horrors of war.
Secondly,
because I believe this photograph connects with Susan Sontag’s quote from “Looking
at War” more than any other war
photograph I can think of. She states, “All photographs wait to be explained or
falsified by their captions…alter the caption: alter the use of these deaths.”[2]
The captions and news articles built around this photograph really do matter as
many Americans, who were against the war, just look at the horrors captured in
the image, are told Vietnam War, assume the panicked Vietnamese children are
running from the calm soldiers who must be American, and come to the false
conclusion that the United States must have dropped napalm on the village. If
truth behind this image is not captured in the archival record with the
photograph, if the original caption is altered, than the meaning behind the
photograph changes; therefore the true reason those who died, whose deaths were
captured on film, are altered.
My
final reason for choosing this photograph is because of its reputation and
status. Sontag claims that this photograph “probably did more to increase the
public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised
barbarities.”[3] Ut’s
photograph appeared on the front pages of newspapers across the United States
after the original event, won the Pulitzer prize in 1973, has appeared many
times since then in the media discussing the now famous girl in the center of
the image, and will forever be one of those photographs teachers shows to their
students when discussing the Vietnam War. It is a photograph that has prints
existing in many photographic repositories across the country, with the
original negative owned by the Associated Press.
About Photojournalism
Photojournalism
has had more influence on public thinking and opinion than any other genre
today. This form of photography grew out of a documentary tradition that sought
to provide proof that something in life existed or took place.[4]
While documentary photographers seek to show meaning through an accumulation of
images, a photojournalist needs only one shot, a single moment frozen in time,
to create an iconic image that will forever represent a moment in history. Both
the writer Susan Sontag and the art critic John Berger claim that photographs
replace memory. Sontag has said that photographs “provide most
of the knowledge people have about the look of the past.”[5]
Nick Ut’s Iconic Photograph
The Event
In
1972, the United States had begun withdrawing troops from Vietnam, a fact which
can be seen in the U.S. troop levels. At its peak, in 1968 the United States
had 536,100 troops, 156,800 in 1971, and in 1972 the levels of troops had been
reduced to 24,200.[6]
On
June 8th 1972 a battle was taking place between the South Vietnamese
Army and the Viet Cong and representatives from the Associated Press positioned
themselves on the outskirts of Trảng Bàng, a small village in South Vietnam, to
record the events of the day.[7]
Included among the AP representatives was Vietnamese photographer Hyung Cong
“Nick” Ut who on that day photographed the iconic and Pulitzer Prize winning
image that many Americans associate in their memory with the Vietnam War, even
though American soldiers did not partake in this attack.
The
events on June 8th 1972 leading up to Ut’s camera capturing that
image are as follows: South Vietnamese fighter planes were flying overhead
aiming their weapons at the Viet Cong positions, when the canisters filled with
napalm dropped from the planes they missed their targets, instead the canisters
exploded above a road on the borders of Trảng Bàng, moments later a group of
adults and children emerged through oily smoke, some badly burnt, and proceeded
down the street towards the AP representatives.[8]
It was at this moment that Ut positioned himself in the middle of the road and
took his shot capturing the children and soldiers fleeing the village who
appear to be running towards the camera—towards the viewer as they look at the
image.
“The
genius of the photograph is that it is both panoramic and immediate, historical
and personal.”[9] Ut’s
photograph captured not only a historical event but an emotion as well; an
emotion that resonates inside the viewer’s eye that registers into shock as
they look upon the suffering children and the soldiers who appear to be
undisturbed by the events unraveling around them. John Berger says that photographs
of agony seize the viewer; “The most literal adjective that could be applied to
them is arresting.”[10]
By this, Berger is explaining that the viewer is engulfed by the moment
captured on film of someone’s suffering.
In the News
It
is ironic that many Americans associate in their memory Ut’s iconic photograph
of children fleeing the napalm attack with the United States’ war in Vietnam,
considering the fact that American troops did not take part in the battle at Trảng
Bàng. However, when you consider that this image was plastered on the front
page newspapers and the story of the little girl, who is seen running naked in
Ut’s photograph, has been followed by the media throughout her lifetime, it
makes sense that Americans know this photograph well and connect the image and
the event it captures with the Vietnam War. Berger explains that a picture of
war shown by the media becomes “evidence of the general human condition. It
accuses nobody and everybody.”[11]
Through this statement it can be read that it does not matter who dropped the
napalm, or who was responsible for the attack, and it does not matter if the
attack was accidental or intended. What matters is the evidence of agony that
the photograph captured; a moment of human suffering.
I
have two examples from June 9th 1972, when Ut’s photograph appeared
on the pages of major American newspapers: the New York Times and the Chicago
Tribune.
The New York Times
·
Title of accompanying article: “South Vietnamese Drop
Napalm on Own Troops”
·
Caption: “ACCIDENTAL NAPALM ATTACK:
South Vietnamese children and soldiers fleeing Trangbang on Route 1 after a
South Vietnamese Skyraider dropped bomb. The girl at center has torn off
burning clothes. Details on Page 9.”
Chicago Tribune
·
Title of accompanying
article:
“Innocents Bombed: Napalm Victims in Agony”
·
Caption: “Terrified children flee
down Route 1 after napalm bomb landed in friendly territory, amid soldiers and
civilians. Girl at center ripped off her burning clothes.”
Both
newspapers surround Ut’s photograph with information about the event captured.
They state what happened before the photograph was taken in order to fully
inform the viewer on what they are seeing. The titles of the articles and the
captions placed below the photographs describe the image.
In the Archives
What
are the most important aspects of the image that should be documented in the photograph’s
catalog record? Is it the caption, as Sontag argues with her quote “alter the
caption: alter the use of these deaths”[12]
—if you do not preserve the photojournalistic aspects of these war photographs
and the actual historical events, are you changing the meaning of deaths that
were captured on film? Or is it the evidence of human suffering that truly matters
as Berger pointed out by saying “the picture becomes evidence of the general
human condition. It accuses nobody and everybody[13]?
Or can it be a combination of the two? Particularly in the case of Ut’s
photograph which is an example of photojournalism that has become an iconic
image, I feel that both Sontag and Berger are correct. It is important to capture
both the historical fact behind the photograph and the evidence of agony in
order to fully maintain the photograph’s power of evoking emotion.
The
examples of this image’s record in photographic archives and the accompanying
metadata I have chosen to look at come from the Library of Congress, and Artstor.
Library of Congress
A copy of Ut’s photograph resides in the Library of
Congress’s Prints and Photographs Department in the Warren Coville Collection
of Iconic Photojournalism Images. The metadata attached to the digital surrogate
of the photograph correctly states the historical events that occurred and have
even maintained the importance of the girl in the center of the image, a feature
of the image that is mentioned in both the New York Times and Chicago Tribune
captions of the photo.
Artstor
The data captured in Artsotr’s record for this
photograph comes from the University of California, San Diego. This metadata
that is lacking a complete description of the image; it does not document the
emotions shown in this photograph, nor does it capture the history behind it.
Just by seeing the metadata, one could deduce that the photograph is of
children, has something to do with the Vietnam War and napalm bombs. It could
be the data attached to any photograph taken at this event by Nick Ut, rather
than the data attached to an iconic photograph.
Conclusion
By
examining how Nick Ut’s photograph was originally published in newspapers and
comparing it to the information documented in this photograph’s catalog records
at two different repositories, you can see how well, or how poorly, the aspects
of a photojournalism image are preserved in an archives. While Artstor’s data is lacking
any true description that would link the record to this particular photograph,
the Library of Congress has fully captured the historical information attached to
this photograph; however, both of these records fail to describe the emotions that
this photograph both shows and evokes from its viewers.
[1] John
Berger, “Photographs of Agony,” in About
Looking (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 37.
[2] Susan
Sontag, “Looking at War,” The New Yorker
(December 9, 2002): 86.
[3] Susan Sontag,
On Photography (New York: Picador,
1977), 18.
[4] Guy
Baxter, “Historical Photograph: Record, Information Source, Object, Resource,” Art Libraries Journal 28, 2 (2003), 2.
[5] Sontag, On Photography 4.
[6] “Vietnam
War Allied Troop Levels 1960-73,” The
American War Library. http://www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam/vwatl.htm.
[7] Guy
Westwell, “Accidental Napalm Attack and Hegemonic Visions of America's War in
Vietnam,” Critical Studies in Media
Communication 28, no. 5 (December 2011): 407-408.
[8] Ibid,
408.
[9] Frank
Cossa, Photojournalism and the “War at
Home” 10.
[10] Berger,
38.
[11] Ibid,
40.
[12] Sontag,
“Looking at War,” 86.
[13] Berger,
40.
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