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hnpccLast weekend we went to the Melbourne Museum.
Inside, there was an exhibition of photos put together by John Pilger, with captions from him.
Most of them were interesting, in a disturbing kind of way.
Some were funny.
Some - particularly the ones out of Cambodia in the late 1980s - made you want to weep.
But then we got to the "Vietnam 1968" bit of the exhibition and discovered that, according to John Pilger at least, "Vietnam had no drug problems until the arrival of the US forces" and "Most Vietnamese fighting in the Tet Offensive were from South Vietnam" and "Most Vietnamese - both North and South - welcomed Ho Chi Minh as a saviour".
My favourite though was a picture of South Vietnamese soldiers in a "drug treatment camp". Obviously welcoming their saviour. With open arms. For several years. Under compulsion.
Hm.
After that, of course, we tended to take all information given in the captions with a rather large grain of salt. Occasionally we ignored the captions altogether and just looked at the photos.
But in order to appreciate news photos you need the information of who, what, where, when, why.
The photo of the child running from napalm in Vietnam can be taken alone, but is more powerful if you know what she's running from (bushfire? earthquake? village fire?) and the context in which the shot was taken.
Which is probably why I got so annoyed with Pilger.
Inside, there was an exhibition of photos put together by John Pilger, with captions from him.
Most of them were interesting, in a disturbing kind of way.
Some were funny.
Some - particularly the ones out of Cambodia in the late 1980s - made you want to weep.
But then we got to the "Vietnam 1968" bit of the exhibition and discovered that, according to John Pilger at least, "Vietnam had no drug problems until the arrival of the US forces" and "Most Vietnamese fighting in the Tet Offensive were from South Vietnam" and "Most Vietnamese - both North and South - welcomed Ho Chi Minh as a saviour".
My favourite though was a picture of South Vietnamese soldiers in a "drug treatment camp". Obviously welcoming their saviour. With open arms. For several years. Under compulsion.
Hm.
After that, of course, we tended to take all information given in the captions with a rather large grain of salt. Occasionally we ignored the captions altogether and just looked at the photos.
But in order to appreciate news photos you need the information of who, what, where, when, why.
The photo of the child running from napalm in Vietnam can be taken alone, but is more powerful if you know what she's running from (bushfire? earthquake? village fire?) and the context in which the shot was taken.
Which is probably why I got so annoyed with Pilger.
