City - Da nang State - QUANG NAM Country - Vietnam
About
Government only needs their people during election, not while escaping from danger of war. I took this picture along with some 10 other rolls, of people escaped from the abandoned city of Hue, arriving by boat to Danang Bay. In Vietnam during the war, when the government has been switched (took over), if citizens didn't want to stay and ran away, we call their run as "voting by feet".
Unfortunately. these people didn't know that they are going to be abandoned again that night. And I didn't know that I would be trapped in Danang the next day. By the time I took this picture, I was with the Associated Press, Saigon Bureau. We normally had the exposed films flown from the field to Saigon along with ABC, NBC or CBS' films. I was busy and excitedly working without knowing that the previous pick-up on 03-27-1975 was the last one. After that day, no other pick-up, and by sunrise of 03-29, the communists moved in while I was a soldier of the South. My stupidity costs the AP 15 years and a half before they successfully got me out of the country.
Living under the new regime, I can not trust anyone to request processing of these rolls. I must use a blanket to cover myself one night, to develop my films. Due to the lack of a watch or clock, I had the films incorrectly over-developed based on my mouth-count, as you see here. Please advise me what should I do to ?rescue? this noisy photo from an over-developed negative.
[Before I underwent the re-education camp, the majority of my films and photos have been destroyed to avoid longer political sentence the winners imposed on me.]
It's my pleasure too knowing you through usefilm, and a great honor to receive your kind words, after almost 30 years having this photo in the shadow of my past.
Had I been able to send this picture to AP by the end of the war, we don't have the chance to get together in USEFILM today.
Should you are curious to find out the real situation of Danang City by the time of this event, please refer to the book TEARS BEFORE THE RAIN by Larry Engelmann for additional details. + Thanks.
It's my pleasure too knowing you through usefilm, and a great honor to receive your kind words, after almost 30 years having this photo in the shadow of my past.
Had I been able to send this picture to AP by the end of the war, we don't have the chance to get together in USEFILM today.
Should you are curious to find out the real situation of Danang City by the time of this event, please refer to the book TEARS BEFORE THE RAIN by Larry Engelmann [ http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/?view=usa&ci=0195053869 ] for additional details. Thanks.
I think to some the spirit of photography- to capture the moment, and make a statement- has gotten lost in the desire to achieve a "good" shot. One persons artistic touch is anothers idea of a bad picture. Under the conditions you had to work in this is quite amazing.
The more you comments, the more i owe you for your understanding and sharing of my feeling...
This is one of the last pictures I took for the Associated Press at end of the Vietnam war. The mistake was that, I thought I was working for the AP at the time but in fact I was trapped and the winners were coming to change my status to a loser.
For myself, this is the historic turn of the life.
Well may be , some thinks that, But I really like it, some photos don?t need to be perfect in term of photography to mean things to us, " or at least that what I think" this one , is something beyond just good or bad "Photography". the effect and feeling are just so deep, the too much white, the sky and the sea marriage here , did add a nice and just to much meaning to the feeling looking at the person face and the hard life seems around .... :)
This kind of photo is hard to get the love, the like, or the attention of viewers. Actually, it is not a good representation of photography. It was my bad performance during developing of the film.
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