NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 24 number 3 - Spring 2004

By Jim Mulvey, Library Development

The NCSU Libraries has on display another acclaimed exhibition of photographs as a follow-up to the tremendously successful Pulitzer Prize photograph exhibition presented last fall. Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina features more than 150 images taken by photojournalists who died in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam and French Indochina wars. The images document the transformation of the serene landscapes of Cambodia and Vietnam into scenes of nightmarish devastation, and the exhibit is both moving and powerful.

The exhibition, which includes images taken by men and women on both sides of the conflicts, is a compelling tribute to the 135 photojournalists who did not survive. It features the photography not only of Americans, Europeans, Cambodians, and South Vietnamese, but also of the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. The latter photographs had never been seen in the West until this exhibit was assembled by Horst Faas and Tim Page, two photographers who were wounded in Vietnam. The exhibit features images from the 1950s through April 1975.

Faas, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who covered the war for the Associated Press (AP) as its chief photographer for Southeast Asia, is now based in London as the senior photo editor for the AP. Page, a freelance photographer based in England, covered the war for AP, UPI, Paris Match, and Life. Together, they wrote the book Requiem, published in 1997. Faas and Page developed the book and exhibit as a memorial to colleagues who were killed during the wars.

Faas, who served as the photo editor for some of the photojournalists who died, recalled his duties in Vietnam.

"It was my responsibility to explain what happened . . . to go out to the place where the person was killed and see for myself what happened. . . . When Ollie Noonan was killed in a helicopter crash I spent 3 or 4 days walking with the troops under continuous fire until we reached the helicopter. I found the camera, which had been thrown clear, and the film inside was still intact--but there was almost nothing left of Ollie Noonan."

Faas has described the Vietnam War as the last accessible war. "Some of the greatest photojournalists of the century were lost there. One thing is for sure--it changed photojournalism forever."

The exhibition, organized by Faas and Page and put on tour by the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, is on display in the D. H. Hill Library through May 31, 2004. Previously, it has been shown in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Tokyo, Hanoi, Lausanne, London, and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. According to the George Eastman House museum, Requiem "is a demonstration of what war did to the people who suffered and the soldiers who fought. The messages conveyed by the photographs of Requiem explain decades later, in very clear terms, what really happened in Vietnam."

Admission to the exhibit is free. Funding for the exhibition has been provided in part by the Hood Waldo and Mary Munch Rood Library Endowment. Library hours for the general public are Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Building access after 10:00 p.m. is restricted to NC State students, faculty, staff, and other eligible library borrowers. A current picture ID is required for entrance after 10:00 p.m. For more information about the exhibit, events, hours, or parking, please visit the exhibit Web at www.lib.ncsu.edu/exhibits/requiem or call Jim Mulvey at (919) 515-3339.