Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2024 -

The war in Vietnam is known in Vietnam as the "American War," and often elsewhere as the "Vietnamese War." This book provides a detailed examination of the role photographs--by photographers from different countries--played in Vietnam, specifically photographs from American and Vietnamese photographers. The primary issue is how the war was pictured by these international photographers, and Phu (media studies, Univ. of Toronto) offers an important demonstration that different viewers have different interpretations of photographs--i.e., makers and viewers may read reality in a photograph differently. Using Vietnamese/American responses, Phu presents a treatise on the war and its varied international understandings. As Ansel Adams said long ago: photographers "do not take; they make." And, this reviewer would add, they do not take, they do not capture, they do not shoot; they make. Finally, though, Phu is Vietnamese and views journalistic, family, wedding, and other photographs "beyond and around" the war and their reflection of what the people saw and experienced, and how they responded. Readers should take this book seriously as they respond to contemporary photographs of all kinds.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.