Eddie Adams: War Photographer
Catch so much as a glimpse of an Eddie Adams photograph and you’ll never forget it.
The late photographer snapped some of the most indelible celebrity images of the last twenty-plus years, from a portrait of perennial clown Jerry Lewis, half his face covered in grease paint, to a shot of Clint Eastwood taken from the back that became the poster art for his Oscar-winning movie Unforgiven.
But the image no one could ever shake, not even Adams himself, was the photo of a Saigon police chief shooting a Vietcong guerilla point-blank. The horrible moment would become a symbol that solidified the image of an unpopular war with the American public.
The new documentary An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story recalls the impact that photograph had on both the Vietnam War and Adams himself.
The film — which opened July 3 at the Starz Film Center in Denver and hits Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities later this summer — recalls Adams’ body of work and the fascinating man behind the camera.
The photographer worked his way up during the 1960s from one small newspaper to the next, but his talent ultimately earned him a gig with the Associated Press. He became one of many wire photographers assigned to cover the escalating war in Vietnam, a job which proved deadly for some of his peers.
Adams earned the soldiers’ trust by sharing the risks they endured, but it was his ability to sense — and capture — a critical moment which epitomized his gifts. Those images could shatter the heart, from wounded warriors on the battlefield to the innocents caught in the crossfire.
While some of the talking heads assembled here, including former broadcast news anchors Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw, spoke openly about how Adams’ work impacted the anti-war effort, he simply wanted to take the best pictures possible.
It’s fascinating to watch the gaggle of old guard reporters recall Adams and his work. It’s a who’s who of questionable journalistic ethics, including Peter Arnett, whose work inspired a number of controversies, from sloppy coverage of Operation Tailhook to his pro-Iraq comments at the dawn of the Iraq War.
60 Minutes mainstay Morley Safer also salutes Adams here, in between drawing glib parallels between the Iraq war and Vietnam.
Eddie Adams unwittingly slimed the Saigon police chief. He later regretted ever snapping the picture—for it was highly misleading. The Viet Cong fighter was also a terrorist who had already murdered a number of people. He did not have a right to a trial and the city was experiencing something of a martial law existence. Adams not only became friendly with the general in later years—he also apologized for the infamous photograph. The legacy media interpreted it in a totally dishonest manner.
I am thankful we didn’t have cell phone digital cameras in Vietnam.
That picture he took would have been child’s play.
-special memory
great friend and my hero Charles- presumed killed in action, body not recovered. 07/06/68
18 years old-
-But not to weep-
we celebrated one hell of a Fourth.
McNamara was cursed with a long life! I wish he had lived another 100 years, so he could have been tormented further by his evil deeds! He played politics with the lives of America’s children! There is no excuse for this man!
Why can’t we find a way to turn the Left’s crimes into images?
And I wish that everyone who has the chance will use that photo to teach their children about the laws of war–and the moral ambiguity of a single photo.
Greetings:
Back in the last ’69, I was an infantry squad leader in Viet Nam. One day, while we were being resupplied by helicopter out in the bush, a camera crew arrived along with the things we needed.
A while later, our Captain came over to me with the crew in tow and asked me if I wanted to take them out on a patrol I was about to leave on. In one of my proudest moments in the war, I replied, in my New York fashion, with a question, “Do I have to bring them back?” We went out; they didn’t.
I am profoundly uncomfortable with media involvement in combat operations. It’s one more thing to worry about when everyone is chock full of worries already. Nobody goes into a restaurant through the kitchen. Our combat soldiers deserve similar respect. Let the media build their résumés on someone else’s work.
An Unlikely Weapon is definitely a must see! The way the images are put together and presented is absolutely fabulous.
1. David Thomson:
Police Chief > VC Terrorist/murderer
The way I heard it, the Police Chief’s wife
was one of the victims; She was dismembered,
and bled to death.
You ask me we could learn a few things from that police chief.
It’s ironic that the two most iconic images of the Vietnam war, Eddie Adams’ Saigon Execution and Nick Ut’s napalm burned Vietnamese girl at Trang Bang, ended up distorting the truth.
Adams’ long insisted that the South Vietnamese general was right to summarily execute the VC who had just killed a bunch of people during a VC operation in Saigon. Adams said, regretfully, that the general killed the VC and his photo figuratively killed the general. Adams regarded the general as a hero.
Nick Ut’s photo was used by antiwar activists and to this day it is seen as symbolic of US military action in Vietnam but no Americans were in the photo. The napalm was dropped by South Vietnamese planes, not US planes, at the order of ARVN commanders, not US. The soldiers in the picture are Vietnamese, not US.
When I point this out to lefties, they like to go on about how the napalm girl photo teaches “larger truths” than the facts of the photo.
Dave Thompson is correct:
Neil Davis, an Australian War Photographer gives a partial account of that time here: http://australianscreen.com.au/titles/frontline/clip3/
Neil, who worked mostly with Vietnamese and later Cambodian troops, shot the footage seen in the clip. He was killed / murdered by ‘friendly’ Thai troops during one of the many coups in Bangkok on 09 September 1985. The camera still running, Neil filmed his own death.
As Neil says: General Loan learned that the VC/NVA was captured near the police compound where Loan’s friend, wife and 6 children were ‘murdered’ by the VC/NVA. As an (OZ) adviser with the ARVN, I ran across Neil a few time in SVN. Always cheerful and optimistic, he loved the Vietnamese soldiers and always spoke up for them as they were doing the bulk of the fighting (contrary to what the official reports may say).
A number of attempts to assassinate Loan (sanctioned by the SVN president), failed, including a helicopter gunship attack on a bunker Loan was in. General Nygoc Loan died from cancer at his home in Burke, Washington. It was definitely one of those occasions during the TET offensive, 1968, where you wouldn’t want to investigate too thoroughly for fear what you might dig up about your own troops. No names – No pack drill.
The obscenity of that picture is safe me looking at it.
One have to think what would happen to the photographers if they were traveling with NVA and VC troops snapping pictures.