The execution of Nguyen Van
Lem occurred during the time of the Vietnam War. An Associated Press
photographer and former Marine, Eddie Adams, standing only a few feet away from
the sudden execution, took the photo on February 1, 1968. With only a film
camera, Adams managed to catch the exact moment the gun was shot at Nguyen.
Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan walked into the street where Nguyen Van Lem
was handcuffed and General Nguyen quickly yet casually extended his arm out and
shot Van Lem point blank in the head. In the photo itself, you see Van Lem’s
face contorted from being caught at the exact moment the bullet made contact.
The official name for this photograph is the Saigon
Execution and was taken exactly 50 years ago this year. The photographer, Eddie
Adams, only clicked his shutter once and was able to catch the photo that became
one of the most famous war photos in history. Many compared his photo to that
of photographer Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of the U.S. Marines raising the flag
at Iwo Jima during World War II. But Adams grew to hate his photo. He claimed
there was too much information missing about what was really happening, but
nevertheless, Adams still won a Pulitzer Prize for capturing such a gruesome
and raw moment of the brutality of the war. In reality, the photo was not of
what might appear to be a Vietnam General gunning down an innocent civilian
named Nguyen Van Lem; instead it was of Nguyen Van Lem, an assassin and leader
of the Viet Cong death squad who made their targets South Vietnamese National
Police officers and their families. The Viet Cong were “English Vietnamese
Communists” who fought against South Vietnam.
After Eddie Adams captured the shot, General Nguyen
turned to Adams and stated, “They killed many of my people, and yours, too,”
then simply walked away. Eddie later stated that even though the General killed
Van Lem, Adams “killed the general with my camera.” Loan’s life was changed
forever with the world believing he was a reckless murderer. He was a hated man
for the rest of his life, but died in his home July 14, 1998. Adams was able to
write a eulogy for General Loan in Time magazine and was able to better the
image he created for him in the first place.
The photo did not do much about the war and America’s
involvement. But once another photo was taken and shown to the world of a young
9-year-old girl screaming as she ran naked down the road because of a napalm
attack on her village, America’s revulsion grew even greater towards he war.
Malcolm Browne was a
30-year-old Associated Press permanent correspondent in Saigon, Vietnam. Browne
was already aiming for the Pulitzer Prize for his stories and photos, but the
goal came sooner than expected on June 11, 1963.
Buddhists
in South Vietnam were facing their own war by a constant growing tension under
Catholic, Ngo Dinh Diem who was the first president of the Republic of Vietnam.
The President’s regime for the Buddhists was repressive and refrained them from
fully practicing their religion. On May 8, 1963, many Buddhists decided to fly
the Buddhist flag even with a government ban restricting the showing of
religious flags. Because of their protest, South Vietnamese soldiers opened
fire on the Buddhists and killed a total of nine. Between May 8 and June 11,
monks walked streets and stopped for various demonstrations and memorial
services for those who were killed in the shooting. Finally, on June 1st,
went to Malcolm Browne to inform him of two monks who would be committing
ritual suicide in protest against the regime of President Diem.
The
Immolation of Thich Quang Duc occurred at exactly 9:22 AM on June 11, 1963. Malcolm
Browne made it to the pagoda where the monks and nuns were chanting a typical
funeral chant and getting ready to walk out into the streets. The group made
their way to central Saigon until they decided to stop at a major intersection
where a car drove up and three monks got out, two young and one much older. The
older monk sat down in the middle of the intersection and the two young monks
came over and covered him with gasoline. The older monk pulled out a matchbook,
lit a match, and placed it in his lap and set himself on fire. He never cried
out, never even changed the solemn expression on his face. But once he was too
blackened to recognize, the monks declared him dead and brought a coffin.
The photo Browne captured of the burning monk
only took 15 hours over 9,000 miles to become breaking news. The photo was
published on June 12, 1963, in American newspapers across the country. Due to
the photo, President John F. Kennedy “ordered a review of his administration’s
Vietnam policy.” The photo became known as “The Ultimate Protest” and created
the path for other iconic images from the Vietnam War such as the photo of the
execution of Nguyen Van Lem and the young girl running nakedly away from a
napalm attack.
President
Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky. It was a scandal of the ages
and caused only the second president in the history of the U.S. to be impeached.
Dirck
Halstead, the senior White House photographer at the time, snapped a photo of
President Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky embracing in the middle of a large
crowd on October 23, 1996, only a few days before the 1996 presidential
election. At this time, no one knew of the affair between Lewinsky and Clinton,
which had been going on since November of 1995.
It
wasn’t until late 1997 when Linda Tripp, a friend of Lewinsky’s, spoke up and
shared an audio tape of her and Lewinsky speaking about the affair and Lewinsky
sharing the details. By August 10, 1998, Halstead’s photo of the
Clinton/Lewinsky embrace became the front cover of Time magazine with an
article inside about the affair.
The
interesting story behind the photo is the fact that Halstead thought nothing of
it. He snapped photos the whole night those few days before the ’96 election,
but never truly considered the powerful photo he had obtained. Halstead was
still shooting this event with a film camera instead of switching to the
digital, which ended up saving his photo of Clinton and Lewinsky. After the
news broke out of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, Halstead asked his assistant to
look through his discarded film slides within his archives. Sure enough the
photo of Clinton and Lewinsky embracing that fateful day was found. This photo
ended up winning Halstead an Eisie Award for cover photography. He was praised
for shooting with film because the image ended up being saved rather than
deleted if it were taken with digital.
