المصورون الحربيون وسط الرعب والمجازر .. مجلة فن التصوير اللبنانية _ ع٢٤

**Ali Abbass** · 03-15-2023, 06:52 PM

War photographers amid terror and massacres The massacre of (My Lai) in Vietnam...shocks the American conscience

In the Crimean War in 1848, the photographic camera entered the battlefields for the first time, and since that date it has become an integral part of wars. This book takes us back to the first photographs.
He even follows the pictures of the Falklands war in 1983 and the Lebanese war that has not yet stopped.
Given the importance of this topic for my followers. The History of Photography" We have seen its translation from German, especially since it has not been translated into any language yet.
To be accessible to our readers as soon as possible.
The book is by Rene Fabian and Hans Christian Adam
It is located in 340 pages of large size and contains pictures that have not been previously published before now for many reasons, and the pictures are all in black and white, without a doubt. It is divided into seven historical periods that begin between 1848 and 1870 and end between 1950 and 1983.

In 1963 the Vietnam War still looked like a typical war... A dozen journalists were accredited in Saigon. And at Brodards on Tudo Street, an American restaurant in every sense of the word, with mirrors on the walls, air-conditioning, and a music box from which we often hear Edith Piaf's voice. Still an appetite for them.

In the morning, they could take a taxi and go through the fourth road to the Mekong Delta, where the (Delta Mekong)
They eat lunch in a French restaurant that offers four types of food with a drink, and during that they discuss the military situation with a South Vietnamese officer, and then before it gets dark. They return again to Siphon.
The first dozen journalists made their stay in Saigon at the Cou tinental Hotel, a colonial-era hotel, and spent the day in the hotel bar known as the Caravelle. In order to obtain and catch news, in the city of rumors, journalists would go to the swimming pool or Graham Green's Milch bar.
And whoever wanted to relax and rest for a few days, he could travel to Danang, where there is a shower.
And drinks and meat. Steak imported directly from the United States, and here was also the Chinese Beach (China Beach), where one feels
In the United States, it was girls in bikinis, a cafeteria grapefruit drink and chips. Shabis, and one can swim there or practice water skiing, and do whatever he likes.

In addition to the men of the press and the media, prominent personalities flew there, among them, Lucien Bodard, who published the most popular books in the world and who published in Chinatown in Saigon his new book entitled

The Third Man. As soon as Lucien Boudard reached Siphon, the rare stories and stories multiplied. In a press conference, one of the soldiers turned to the present journalists and asked them this question: We have just received a telegram saying that an American journalist has arrived and his name is Graham Green.
Is it known to any of you?
Those present erupted with laughter.
Many went to Vietnam because their civilian lives were routine and devoid of adventure. For example, famous writers suffer from a deficiency complex, including Ernest Hemingway! Ernest Hemingway War informants from World War II want to relive old memories Specialists from armaments magazines want to see real warfare with their own eyes. Of course, war photographers were happy to work again in their real field of work. Hippies like Tim Page also came to Vietnam.
Tim was twenty years old. In Siphon, the orphan boy from a suburb of London discovered what he had always lacked, the love of danger and risk. Where in the world does one get the chance to play with a supersonic jet, drive a tank or fire a missile, and get paid for that big money? But the thrill-seeker didn't drive a tank, didn't drive a motorcycle, and he also had a respectable salary. Like the rest of the paparazzi-hippies, he wore necklaces around his neck and carried
With a rifle, cassettes, and a pop-music device in his bag, he was traveling with Sean Flynn, son of the late Hollywood movie star Errol Flynn, and photographers Rick Merron and Dana Stone on motorcycles.
Smudged, to the front, and these riders, whom they called the Ray Riders, were famous photographers, doing tests with the camera mounted on the barrel of the gun and in the split second a soldier needed to pull the trigger - his camera, at the same time picking up where he was at the time. Himself killed a man and took his image! ....
Tim Bag was paid by Life magazine and Time magazine. It was estimated at half a million brands, in addition. To hospitalization expenses.. After twelve operations and a year and a half stay at Walter-Reed Hospital in Washington, he prepared himself in order to participate in the next operation and during his convalescence. Tim Bag, from a British publisher, got an offer to write a book. He proposed a title for the book, “Me and the War,” and the publisher says, “With this book, I want to rid myself of war and its sedition,” and this indicates that the publisher did not really know Tim Page.
And to the war of men, women also went, some of them followed their friends to Vietnam, and after they got there, they borrowed a camera and started filming.
To Saigon, Françoise Dumoeller, Christine Spengler, and Penny Tweedy came to photograph war victims.

In 1966 Catherine Demulder arrived
Leroy (Catherine Leroy) to Saigon. And the French photographer had only booked a one-way ticket, without a return, and she had only a camera with her, along with the amount of five hundred dollars and the desire to become a photojournalist! Catherine Leroy becomes a freelance reporter with The Associated Press. -Associ ated Press, and if one of her pictures was sold, she got fifteen dollars in return. A lot of the photojournalists only made a kind of visit, but they came back and settled down most of the time. He has leaflets and information, and then they go to write their reports on the fronts and the fighting in their air-conditioned rooms in the hotel, on the typewriter, without having gone to the front at all, and for these people, the war was To the war at exactly the appointed time, just as he goes to the opening party of a play, and the journalists and photographers used to travel to the places of the fronts by taxis, buses, and helicopters, as if they were going to a press conference, and before taking off she would give signs to hang on their jackets, a writing notebook with a pen and a cooler box for Drinks, and the only Vietnamese word they know is Baochi, Bao Chl) meaning press, and its purpose is to signal not to shoot.

Most of the journalists did not need to leave Siphon to catch a glimpse of the war. Mike Here says. We were sitting on the roof of the hotel and watching the airstrikes on both sides of the river, which are so close that a magnifying glass can photograph the distinctive markings of the planes, and we were standing there in dozens. Just like the aristocrats who watch an exciting scene, but without the slightest indifference, US Senator William Fulbright (William Fullbright) said in his book titled The Arrogance of Power.
- In the first week of March 1966, the US Marines and South Vietnamese forces were involved in an operation called Utah, in a bloody fight with the North Vietnamese forces. Journalist Joseph Galloway of the US news agency United Press International wrote. The following report is about the phase of the Utah process.
We were standing on the hill shouting, we were giving good advice Kill the son of a bitch... Follow him... What's wrong with you idiots? .
The military were. They always love journalists who do not interfere with what does not concern them, and Graham Green wrote about the Indochina war saying that after the battle had ended with a successor and the dead removed from the battlefield, the journalists would be summoned to Hanoi, and there they would be received by the supreme commander.

They are hosted in the Al-Sahafa camp for the night, and then they are flown by plane to a height of several thousand meters, to a height that heavy machine gun bullets cannot reach. Over the last battlefield. And then the plane was returning them to Saigon and to their hotel, Continental.. as if they were on a school flight!! . .

Even the boys were photographed in Vietnam, in order to please the western media, who were coming for the pictures. Thus, the informants of the West German magazine Stern one day met the youngest photographer in the world. His name was Lo Manh Hung, at the age of twelve. For years, Le Manneh was standing in front of the hotel equipped with two cameras and a helmet with the words "Baoshi" written on it... and he was selling one picture for ten dollars, and his pictures showed scenes of street wars, the Viet Cong dead, the ruins, and the refugees with their faces that were marked by panic and mortal fear... And as a Vietnamese citizen, he was The boy can photograph as he pleases in the city's neighborhoods and in the suburbs, where no foreign photographer dares to enter.
And for men with cameras, that is, photographers, the risk of life was greater than for journalists with writing charges. Written by Tom Hopkinson
The photojournalist for the British magazine Picture Post says: In dangerous situations, the author or journalist can escape
himself and ran away.

**Ali Abbass** · 03-15-2023, 06:55 PM

Quite simply, as far as he can and when necessary, he writes down in his head what he witnessed, but take a camera and take pictures and then you will see what might happen to you, which is just like taking a match and lighting it in a gas-filled cellar. And when the bombs fly. The writer can hide his head, take pictures, he has to stand. And he raised his head in all the meaning of the word photography!!!
and for photojournalist Don McCullin (Don Me) but the man with the camera. To be able to Cullin, keeping one's head high is the moral of journalism. He says:
- I do not think that one can see over the edge if one does not return one's neck. I often stood firmly on the brink of the abyss, and I was not even a single step away from it, and this is the correct position for those who want to see and show what the real meaning of suffering and pain is. McCullen was famous for his courage and courage And his disregard for fear, and his fellow journalist, Green Way, wrote about him saying:
- Don would take risks just as a bullfighter goes into the ring in front of the bull's horns
The raging and the terrible battle around (Hud) in
Hoh February 1968. It was in the midst of the walls of the eighteenth century. A center of progress, where a company of marines suffered heavy losses, and all those men spent hours of the most terrible, as shells were raining on them from all sides.
Later, he asked me about the company, do you know McCullen? I answered him, yes, I know this man, and the officer said to me: Imagine this man advanced to the front lines in that front and he alone rescued people and returned them to the back lines ... even if this man was a Marine belonging to my family. I would have nominated him for the Medal of Honor!

And a victim of his profession, the Upi photographer Charles Eggleston died... In May 1968, Eggleston was with five of his colleagues from the foreign press near the city of Cholon, and they lost their way to find themselves in a Vietcong site and in the attack that he had carried out Those on the journalists' jeep killed four of them, although, as mentioned by the only one (who survived among them, which was Eggleston himself...) they always shouted, "Bauchi," that is, "press." A day after the massacre, Eggleston was supplied with weapons. And he returned to the jungle, as part of a personal revenge operation... in which he became the victim...
Photographer Horst Fass says: The forces always prepare their quality from the leaders, and I personally never go to the front with poorly led forces... before boarding the helicopter when the commander does not carefully examine the weapons of his group or if his soldiers care about the girls More than (their) interest in their offensive weapons, there is nothing that compels me to accompany them.

On one occasion, before a military operation, Fez browsed aerial photographs of the combat zone. It is an empty place surrounded by bushes, and the longer Fez looked at the pictures, the more he felt double fear, as he noticed many gaps in every place of the pictures and said to himself, “Their hidden machine guns will tear us apart.
And the commandos, who were sent to the aforementioned place, and the photographer Horst Fass did not accept that one of them killed ten individuals, including them, in the first seconds of the landing operation.
Most of the photographers were mastering the art of survival. Some were painting black the shiny metal parts of their cameras, so that their shine would not expose their whereabouts to enemy snipers, the Italian photographer Romano. Romano Cgnoni painted his face with black, while the French photographer Catherine Le Roy wrote these words on a piece of paper and carried them in front of her as the banner of the French press, Paris.
while war photographer Ross Baugham was whistling through his lips in the bush a song by Maurice Chevalier.

As for the night, it was desirable to light the car from the inside, so that everyone would know that there were civilians inside it on their way to their homes....
Peter Scholl-Latour was going with open arms towards the Viet Cong soldiers and squeezing their hands, because nonviolent movements were a sign of confidence.
Such tricks were learned by war photographers on the chaotic battle fronts in Africa. In Sudan, the photographer of the well-known West German magazine Stern, Fred Lhrt, bought khaki clothes like those worn by British colonial officers, and he used to pass by everywhere, as people believed that he was a British officer and Horst Fass. He wore in the Congo, despite the intense heat, the shirt with the collar and the necktie, and he says:
- They thought that I was an employee of a foreign embassy, and Fez was taking the pictures he wanted despite the security guards, and he was even able to take a picture of the Congolese leader, Patrice Lumumba, the first independent head of state of the Congo, on his way with the detachment that executed him...
The photographer, Gred Heidermann, claimed that he was one of the mercenary soldiers in the Congo, and when the men stormed the houses to plunder and plunder, he worked as a photographer for Stern magazine, as if he was messing around in the safes and drawers, and at a moment when no one was watching him, he put his camera in one of the drawers, and then he opened the drawer again and shouted, surprised. On his face: What is this? What a sweet surprise.. And he took out the camera, and everyone envied him for this spoil, as it was the manna of all the other things that his colleagues got. ... Then Heidemann shouted again, "It looks like the camera is equipped with film. Let's try that." .. And he proceeded on the trail to take pictures of the mercenary soldiers while they were carrying out acts of looting and looting without any of them paying attention to this smart game, and these actions that he photographed were in the city of Stanleyville

Obtaining accreditation for filming in Vietnam and therefore in Saigon was like a children's beard. The informant or war photographer had only to book a travel ticket to Saigon, where he would go to the MACV (meaning - Military Assistance) and then he would go and put in front of the official there the editor-in-chief's book and his press card. He signs a fifteen-item statement, after which he receives his accreditation card from the (MACY) journalist and tailor, and he separates a safari jacket with anti-fire pants.

For the tough guys, there were cameraman combat jackets from Custom Armor Manufacturers of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to buy, designed by professional war informants. The photographer - as the advertisement indicates - was spared from machine gun bullets, shrapnel, and pistol bullets.
Journalists are men. Gadget tech geeks and journalists were the first to get down to business with pocket calculators.
And they walked with the Walkmann in their ears. They bought them either from Tehran or Hong Kong, and they carry wristwatches, inside which a small TV is installed. And the war photographers are Gadget guys, Super. They love tech games. They were buying in Vietnam all the things and commodities that could be useful in war: binoculars, a bulletproof jacket, and sun glasses for the Royal Air Force.

In Saigon and in Beirut one could see them at press conferences, David D
Dungan (David D. Puncan) was dressed head-to-toe in fresh clothes and equipped for every occasion. Duncan was wearing a pilot's jacket and a helmet on his head, and he also bought military binoculars, so that he could watch and follow the battles from a distance, and he carried with him a transistor radio that listened to the news, and a pocket lamp for night observation. In addition to a compass and a container that does not run out of water for endorsing films, and two drinking bottles.

Colleague Larry Burrows (L, arry) Burrows, like many other military informants, had designed his own clothes with pockets specially deep to hold material and film. He would spend a long night cleaning lenses and various filters, checking if the batteries were new, working, if necessary, disassembling the camera, then reassembling it, and stuffing the pockets of his jungle jacket with a gun of filters, extra lenses, lens cloths, writing paper, spare batteries, films and a journalist's books. Quick paparazzi says: When Larry Burrows reached into his pocket he always found what he was looking for effortlessly!
Larlie Burroughs used to work regularly: before he only took one picture. He paints all
A picture he wanted to take on a piece of paper, specifying whether he wanted the picture in length or width, and how it might look, for example, inside the page in a magazine, Life, and while working all month long on the reportage, he used those notes as a kind of document.
And when Larry Burroughs returns from a mission, he will find among his photographic loot. Except for the films he shot. A set of papers tucked in his pockets, on which he wrote the names of the places he visited and took pictures of, as well as the events and names of the people he photographed, in addition to the documents for the correct texts under each picture he wrote at night in the camp, while he was in his sleeping bag by candlelight.

A habit that Larry Burrows does not break after the job, whatever he feels, is to wear a formal dress to dinner, and when his fellow photographers and journalists came to the hotel dirty and with unshaven beards, sweating from them, they recommended hot soup to their rooms, tossing their boots Like cowboys to the corner of the room and throw themselves on the beds, sometimes fully clothed... This is something Larry Burrows would never do at all costs, and even in the middle of the night, he would take a hot shower, shave, put on a clean shirt and formal wear, with a tie of course, and go to dinner. -

Next Episode - Who Stopped the Vietnam War?

المصورون الحربيون وسط الرعب والمجازر .. مجلة فن التصوير اللبنانية _ ع٢٤

المصورون الحربيون وسط الرعب والمجازر .. مجلة فن التصوير اللبنانية _ ع٢٤

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