tour 1 of 16
Vietnam: Behind the Lines
Vietnam: Behind the Lines
Television footage and reportage photography
brought the America-Vietnam War from the jungles of South-east Asia
to the sitting rooms of people around the world. For the first time
in history, a civilian audience was able to monitor military
operations on the other side of the world. Western correspondents,
journalists, writers, photographers and artists travelled to the
battle scenes and their work informs our understanding of the war.
Indeed certain images from this conflict ultimately contributed to
the cessation of the conflict in
1975.
The exhibition
Vietnam: Behind the Lines - Images from
the War 1965-75 (13 June - 1 December
2002, Room 91) presents an aspect of the conflict unfamiliar to a
Western audience: works made by Vietnamese artists. Some were
engaged in the creation of propaganda materials for the Vietnamese
government, some in the recording of the war, others simply
exercising a creative talent for pleasure. These unusual and often
arresting images arranged in five broad themes (numbers in brackets
indicate the pages in this tour): official propaganda (1-8);
communications and base camp life; combat and the new active role
of women (9-11); portraits (12); agriculture and industry
(13-15).
Vietnam: Behind
the Lines public programme is presented in Association with
Visiting Arts.