infoAgent Orange by Philip Jones Griffiths
Agent Orange by Philip Jones Griffiths
Saturday 23 October - Sunday 5 December 2004
‘Collateral ‘Damage’ in Vietnam
There were reports from Ha Noi in 1967 claiming that millions of people had been victims of chemical warfare. Officials in Saigon dismissed these as crude propaganda and for us journalists in the South there was little opportunity to verify claims made by the North. In the summer of 1969 four Saigon newspapers ran stories with
pictures of deformed babies born to women who had been sprayed with Agent Orange. The South Vietnamese government argued that the deformities were caused by venereal diseases and President Thieu closed down the papers for "interfering with the war effort".
Philip Jones Griffiths' Vietnam Inc (1971) is one of the seminal works of contemporary documentary. He began to document the victims of the dioxin-based defoliant Agent Orange in the 1980s and continued over a period of 22 years.
Spending time with the affected children is never easy – twenty year-olds living in ten year-old bodies. Some howling like animals, some giggling hysterically while others search with catatonic stares for meaning in the heavens... Giving birth becomes a game of roulette.
These photographs are a harrowing exploration of an impact of war that has extended through generations, uncompensated and largely forgotten. As the veteran Viet Nam journalist Gloria Emerson puts it: To turn away and not see the photographs is to compound the crime.
Agent Orange: ‘Collateral Damage’ in Viet Nam is published by Trolley and Vietnam Inc has been re-issued by Phaidon Press.
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