 Please welcome Mr. Tommy Hoden, Chairman and CEO of MagRabbit. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the power of picture discussion. We are going to meet two renowned photographers who picture change the public sentiment toward Vietnam War. It is an honor for me to be here today. My name is Tommy Hoden. I was born and raised near Danang, Vietnam. I moved to the US for college when I was 18. When I was about 14 years old, I remember the Marine land being on Danang Beach. The Marine was very generous to everybody, giving candy to children and inspiring the sense of safety and hope for the future. They were truly the statement of freedom and democracy. There are many tragic images from the war and from my hometown, but there were also some good memories and events which should not be overshadowed by the destruction of the war. Today, I live in Austin with two sons born here and my wife, Tanya. I'm lucky I am the chairman of MagRabbit Inc, a global software company founded 25 years ago in Austin. We have several offices, but two offices are dear to me, I Hue and Danang City. I personally show grateful for the soldiers who risked their lives in the Vietnam War and also for the United States of America, which have afforded me the opportunity to make the most of my life here in Austin and this country. Ladies and gentlemen, David H. Kennedy had been shooting in the front lines of history for 50 years. At the age of 25, he was one of the youngest winner of the bullish price, which he won for capturing the loneliness and desolation of Vietnam War. He went on to be appointed President Gerald Ford, personal photographer, serving in the White House throughout President Ford administration. Kennedy had served as a contributing editor for Newsweek and Politico, and he served as a contributing photographer for time and life magazine. American photo magazine named him one of the 100 most important people in photography. Now with Nick Upp, a Vietnamese American, he works as a photographer for the associate press more than a half century. He spent almost a decade covering the Vietnam War, beginning at the age of 16, 16. He won the 1973 bullish price for spot news photography for the terror of war. You might remember his iconic photographer, a photograph of Vietnamese children fleeting from Navy bombing during the Vietnam War. It's also my pleasure today to introduce you our moderator. Ms. Angela Evans is the Dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin. She's a fellow of Jack Bickle region chair in public affairs. Ms. Evans is also a former deputy director of the Congressional Research Service and is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our panelists. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. We are so pleased that you're here, and what we're going to be doing today is this is how we're setting this up. Obviously, we have two very distinguished photojournalists, and many of us who lived through the Vietnam War saw the war through their eyes and through their camera lenses. They've chosen several photographs to be shown to the audience. Siri Adams, so we will take David's photographs first. We're going to watch those, and then we're going to land on a photo and we're going to talk to David, ask him some questions, and then we're going to turn to Nick, and he's also chosen some photos to share with us, and we will do the same thing. So let's start with David's photos. David, why don't you talk to us a little bit about why did you get into photojournalism and then why did you decide that you wanted to go to Vietnam once you did the war? Okay. I think we needed background music here. Everybody's so quiet. Made me nervous. I've been a photographer since I was a kid. I'm a native Oregonian and grew up in a little town called Roseburg, and all I could remember was wanting to get out of that town, and I'm always looking over the ridge to the next place, and my career took a path from Oregon to Los Angeles to New York to Washington, D.C., working for UPI. And during the course of the Vietnam War, when it started, there was a brilliant photographer, Larry Burroughs, Arnett and some of the other people knew him. I never met him, but he was an inspiration to me. He did a story called Yankee Pop of 13 for Life Magazine. It came out in 1965. I was a senior in high school, and the story was, to this day, it's still with me. I do a lot of lectures on photography, and I particularly like to talk about this story about a young helicopter crew chief in the first frame as he's got a smile, he's got to carrying the machine guns out to the helicopter, and then during the course of this mission, they let off some Vietnamese soldiers in the field, and then one of their other helicopters gets shot down, and they go out and rescue the helicopter pilots from the other one, and the cover of the magazine was this guy, and he's screaming, and one of his colleagues is dead in the foreground, but the picture that really did it to me was the last frame was the same young guy bent over and crying alone in a hanger. The arc of the story, it was something, Arnett and everybody were talking about stories you didn't see, and we were getting our information from Life Magazine and all that, but I wanted to do that. I wanted to be able to cover a war. By the time I got to Washington, DC, I was 23 years old, and I was getting, I had my first ride on Air Force One when I was a UPI photographer at 23. I'm reminded of that because I found the flight certificate the other day. That's the kind of thing, the kind of job people want to get. They go to Vietnam to do something like that when they get back, but that wasn't what I wanted to do, and I felt like Mr. Roberts on a supply ship in a backwater watching the destroyers going into combat, and I wanted to be on that ship, and finally I got the opportunity to do it. One of the other things, it was for me as a news photographer, it was my generation's story. I had had four of my classmates from Westland High School, people I knew who I'd photographed and for the annual were killed in combat there were Vietnam Army soldiers, and so I finally finagled my way into it, and I didn't want to be one of those kind of people who 20, 30 years later was making excuses about why I didn't go to Vietnam. But you had this passion, it sounds like you had this passion, and what surprised you when you got there? Were things different than what you thought you'd find when you went there? Well, before I got there, and this was one of the worst days of my life really was, I think the people in my photographers, particularly, are always under playing stuff, and it's like F8 and B there kind of mentality. And right before I left, I was all set to go, a helicopter carrying Larry Burroughs and Henri Ewitt and who was a Japanese photographer and Kent Potter of UPI. I was on my way to replace Kent Potter, and they got killed. One of my photo heroes was killed and it just scared the hell out of me. All of a sudden this was not an abstract notion about going off to war, even though a lot of my friends had been over there and come back, but I seriously thought that maybe I didn't want to do this, and I don't admit, mind admitting, on numerous occasions being really terrified, but I finally overcame that and got to Saigon, and I had not been overseas, the only country I had ever been to prior to that was the Netherlands, which is not exactly Vietnam. It had its fine points, certainly. And I got there. It was so exciting for me. I must say it was just the energy in Saigon and going to the bureau, the UPI bureau and all these people who had been there and knowing I was setting off on something that I couldn't have anticipated. And I do remember within a week or so I was up in ICOR on a convoy going down the road and there was a dead person on the side of the road. This is something you weren't seeing in New York City. And once again I had this feeling of great fear. There was just a dead person by the side of the road. I didn't even take a picture, but it was astonishing. All of a sudden it's one of those hands us any more moments. But I pushed on. I have a real dedication not only to my profession but to telling stories and taking pictures of things so other people can see them. I don't take my pictures. People ask me why I'm on Facebook. I'm on Facebook because I like people to see what I do. I like people to see what I see. And that's been part of the drive of my career. One of the things you talked about is that as you start going, as you're starting to get integrated into the society and into the war and the fear, one of the things I asked David in the back and he said, oh, this is going to be a touchy-feely question. And I said, yeah, it is. You see all this emotional, raw emotion. You see some of the worst of humanity. And how do you keep yourself whole? How do you keep your eye focused on the story that you want to tell without getting really in despair, in deep despair? How do you really do this? How did you refresh yourself? It's a good question. I think a lot of my friends, a lot of people in this room, certainly veterans, and I will say this. This whole idea of photographing wars was not really about glorifying my profession so much as showing what's happening to other people. And I think the ability to do that, the fact that I was in Vietnam without somebody telling me to go. I wasn't drafted. I actually did do a service to a degree. I went in the National Guard to get out of going to Vietnam. And I have one of those more interesting stories. I had to get out of the Army to go to the war, which the general who signed off on it didn't feel it was going to be creating an ugly precedent. But when I got over there and experienced a lot of situations, close calls and all that, I've thought about this a lot, about why have I kind of been able to put it in the rear view mirror and other people can't. And really it's lucky for me. I have a lot of friends certainly in the military and I think they've had more of a problem with it. If you're in a situation, you've got to be there for 12, 13 months as a draftee or that's your tour in Vietnam. You had no choice about what was going to happen to you. You're also the one with the gun doing the shooting. And I certainly was as much risk, any of us who covered the war were at risk. That was what we did, particularly photographers who have to be there on the front lines. I can't answer why. I covered actually the only story that ever gave me nightmares was Jonestown. And if you saw that, I had the cover picture on Time Magazine of Jonestown and I had horrible nightmares from it. I saw the dead body of Jim Jones rising to get me. I swear to God, it doesn't plague me now, but I remember the nightmare. And I have not had one bad dream about Vietnam. The other night I had a bad dream about the North Koreans dropping the Statue of Liberty on me. That was weird. But generally my dreams are not quite so substantial as that. So I'm lucky, but I'm incredibly sympathetic to people who have had problems with my own colleagues and certainly veterans, because from my class in high school I've had... And in my career, I've just met so many people who have been in different wars up to and including the recent conflicts. But I don't have a good answer for why I didn't suffer from the ill effects. One of the things I always think about is there was so much controversy back home about the war. There's a lot of opposition to the war. There's support for the war. And as a photographer, did that come into your mind in terms of some of the pictures of how that may sway, either side in terms of how that person might view the war? Well, when I went to Vietnam, it was maybe kind of hard to figure because I was covering anti-LBJ demonstrations. I remember when Hubert Humphrey came to Portland, Oregon in 1966, I just started... In fact, this is literally my 50th year as a professional photographer. Nick's been with AP for 50 years, so figure he's only 10 years younger than I am. But I didn't have a political dog in the hunt on that one. I think it's because I was brought up in what I hope is not an old-fashioned way in the news business where, trying to be objective, we are not objective by nature. I mean, you see things, we all see things differently. We may be watching the same incident. But I didn't have anti-war feeling about it. It wasn't... To me, it was a story. It was directly impacted me. It was taking the lives of people I knew. My career has been based on curiosity. I wanted to see what's going on over there. And by the time I got there, it was already 1971. And Eddie Adams, our friend and the guy who took the famous picture of General Wan shooting the Vietcong suspect and a person I admired. But he was my competitor. He was AP. I was an API. He told me, just before I left, that all the good pictures had already been taken. It's kind of guy Eddie was. Anybody knows him, Arnett would understand that. And when I won the Pulitzer Prize, something, by the way, that I did not know I'd been put up for, the first I heard about it, it was the No Anxiety Award. I hadn't even given it a second thought. I got all these cables. I was in Saigon, and one of them was from Eddie Adams and said, I was wrong. Congratulations. Oh, that was nice. Yeah. He went really overboard on that cable. But I didn't, you know, and how did my pictures affect? I'm hoping that the pictures I take really create awareness of what's going on. It's only one person's point of view. Like any photographer will tell you, we do the best we can to try to honestly portray what's happening and then other people can make up their minds. And with Nick's photo of Kim Folk running down the road, the picture could be used on both sides of the equation about, look, this is what happens because of war, which is a really good point. But who's fault is it? It's all of our faults that allow that kind of thing to happen. But I didn't look at it as a political tool as much as an informational vehicle, really. One of the things that I think about sometimes is, like your day, your typical day. There isn't a typical day, obviously. But you go out and you shoot a lot of different pictures. Which ones do you decide to send forward and which ones do you decide to keep back? And have you kept back photos that only you will see and the rest of us won't? Well, I used to, maybe generally my day was like a week or two going into the field. Somebody once asked me what was the worst thing about Vietnam. I said it ruined camping for me. Seriously, my kids, I've never been camping with my kids and they just still don't get why I don't want to go do that. But I would just ship the film back. It wasn't like today where you can upload photographs from a battlefield or wherever. But we would ship our film if we were up in Da Nang or somewhere and try to get people to hand carry the film back down to Saigon. They would pick the pictures. Actually, I had nothing to do with it, really. Pretty much through my career. Now the digital era has changed that. In a bad way, I think where editors are being cut out of the mix. I always felt like for writing or taking pictures, you really need a good editor. A professional editor is somebody who is very helpful and you don't always agree with their choices. But the idea, but the pictures went to Saigon and photos were picked there and transplanted out. It wasn't like people say, well, I remember if TV brought the war into your living room, which Vietnam was the first time, but if television brought to your living room, the still photo has always taken it directly to your heart. There's a great show at the museum in Washington, D.C. about the Vietnam War, and there are a lot of these famous pictures that Nick's pictures are in there and Eddie Adams' pictures, but people will stop and they just, they are fixated by the photographs. You don't get the same thing out of moving pictures. They both have their place. A lot of people don't remember, but Eddie's picture of the execution, there was an NBC camera, and I think NBC, right? Who was there with Eddie and has a film of the guy shooting the guy in the head, and nobody remembers it, and it was brutal. I mean, you don't want to see it. I'm sure it's out there on YouTube, along with everything else. But the still picture, once you've seen it, is just embedded in your brain, and that's why Joe Rosenthal's Iwo Jima photograph, I gave the eulogy at Joe's funeral, and I had known him since 1968 to still be the greatest photograph ever taken, but, and Nick was there at the funeral, Eddie had already died, and I said that Nick was the last surviving member of the goddamnest pictures I've ever seen club, and the other two members were Joe Rosenthal and Eddie Adams. And those are pictures where Iwo Jima was about a great moment in American history, brave Marines raising the flag over Mount Surabachi on Iwo Jima, and then the exact opposite, the underbelly, the dark side of war, which is the napalm girl and Saigon execution. But those pictures are all, they're three of the most influential pictures ever taken, and you can look at them any way you want in terms of what they meant. How did your photographs change over the time that you were in Vietnam? Did they change? How did they change? Well, I mean, there was never a day where I thought the war was a good idea, and my pictures changed where anytime you go somewhere for the first time, particularly going from the United States and the Southeast Asia into Saigon and then Vietnam all around, every day was a new day. I think my pictures were actually better the first few months I was there because I fell into what I call the familiarity hole. And one of the hardest things for a professional photographer or anybody in general is trying to overcome familiarity of being in a situation day in and day out, and I give people an exercise now taking photographs, I call it the photo fitness workout, where you go in your neighborhood and you take pictures of something you look at every day but you don't see. A professional photographer has to do that all the time, and granted, that wasn't like the same thing was happening all the time, but I was much more engaged with it early on and I don't think my pictures change. I really think my pictures have gotten better over the years, I've become more thoughtful about it. Some people would disagree with that, but I really do think more about what I'm doing, not as an artist, but as what's a better way to tell this story. Thank you. I think we'll give Nick a chance to talk to us as well. So what we're going to do is look at the photographs that Nick chose for us to view today. My understanding is that one of the reasons you got into photojournalism as your brother was a photojournalist and he was killed in the war and you were 16 when you started this. So this war was about your people, it was your country. So talk to us a little bit about what you saw, your role in photojournalism in terms of its role in the war. You see picture of my old brother, he put the picture he owned in 1965. Then he went back to Simon again, I think six months later, October 13, 1965. And a vietcong killed all Vietnamese rangers in the country of Mekong Delta and he killed my brother. He... Then after the... one of the... Phyllo and Potholpher come before my family, he says, your brother died. And the next two days we're a big funeral to all Vietnamese young men. Come to the Biranet or my funeral, my brother. Then 1966, I applied for the job for AAP, went on 16 years old. 16 years old. Yes, 16 years old. Then I become... come back to Potholpher. I go from 1966 until 1985 before the 4th Saigon. So Nick, we all know about your picture of Kim Phuc when you went... Can you tell us what happened that day before that picture was taken and then what happened after that picture was taken? The North Vietnamese and Vietcong, they locked out Highway 1. About 25 miles away from Saigon, between Saigon and Thay Ninh. And they fight in the middle of the day, June 7th. Then I beat them to June 8th, like early morning, like 8 a.m. morning. I shot thousands of Vietnamese refugees in the Kranmen village to run to Saigon. And a lot of bombs outside of Bagota. Then I took a lot of pictures. Then I traveled with the 25th Division of the South Vietnamese Army about one mile. Then I, you know, you knew Potholpher, you knew enough pictures. Then I went back to Highway 1 again. I saw one South Vietnamese Army, he throws a smoke grenade. There's a book coming up that he has two airplanes coming. The first one, they dive and they drop four bombs, 837. And the second one, like, really a one-sky-rider, they drop four bombs. I keep following the picture and I saw the bomb explosion. I don't believe the name bomb. I stand there on a hundred-yard away from my side in the Bagota. I don't believe everyone in the village because they're all gone. And after a flash of smoke, I saw the people running. I said, oh, my God, there are people in there. Then the grandmother carried one new baby. You see the baby, like, one second he died on the camera. His skin came off. And at that moment, please help my run child. Then I took a picture. I hold my camera and you find I looked with black smoke. I saw the girls with her arm running. Myself, I don't know why she's naked. Then I run inside the Bagota, take a picture, keep running. Her left arm burns so bad, her skin and the back. Then I think she died in a minute. I had two cannon walls. I put the wall in her body right away. Then her ankles, they can't be helped or the children to hop, you know. Then I had my van there, the car with my driver. I put all the children in my van. She screaming, I'm dying, I'm dying, my brother, her brother picture on the left. And she cannot sit like this. She sit down on the floor in the car. Then there were about 35 minutes to Gucci hospital. I kept watching her die in my car because I know she'll be dying. And the tire in the hospital, Gucci hospital, nobody helped her because they said, sorry, we don't have enough medicine. And so many soldiers and the family people under, can you take all the children, the men hop in Saigon, the children hop in. I said, next two hours, they all die. I cannot do anything. I show my media, perhaps I'm eight people up, if the kid dies, you'll be in trouble tomorrow. Then all the children. I had a nerve to bring all the kids inside the hospital. I said, oh, good. That's why I went back to Saigon right away with my older friends to develop. And then the love of my doctor, with my Japanese editor, we all ate a lot of food. The first picture, he looked at the picture of my photo. I said, why are you so naked girl? I said, no, that's a bomb. Burn her clothes. Then we make one picture five by seven, wait for my boss, hold fast. He looked at my picture. I said, why are you still here? Can you send her to New York? We can do a picture of the naked girl. Then they talk about it. After 30 minutes later, they moved the picture. My picture, Saigon, Tokyo, New York. And New York called Saigon the picture. They called it the whole war, every one of the war. They used the picture. So there was a possibility of censorship because it was the first time they were looking at a new girl. So there was question about that. As soon as they got over that, it was on the New York Times front page. And it changed. It was a very influential picture in terms of the war. So Nick, tell us a little bit about how you felt about actually taking photographs of your people. Because many of your photographs are about people in their everyday living in a war circumstance. Can you talk to us a little bit about that approach to the war? I learned so much from my brother. He took a lot of pictures of people die every day. Then he'd bring pictures. He'd show you why and me. That's why I learned from him. I remember in 1963, when American landing, the man or the foot, not many, like a couple thousand, that's why I want to become a photographer. I want to look so much like I said, I one day want to be a photographer. I tell my brother. And when my brother died, I said, I got to talk to the AP. I said, I want to become a photographer. I said, you're too young. We don't want to hire you too young. You're only 16. But they give me jobs later. I crowd everywhere in Vietnam, from Mekong Delta, Central Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, everywhere with soldiers, Army, Marines, all over the Vietnam. That's why I have a picture almost every day. How did it change you as a photographer, doing, photographing your own people in some of these terrible situations? You know, the picture, I don't change much because I remember over 40 years ago, I shot for all the film. And you carry the back part, like 40 raw films, black and white, culinary, they put a poor camera. And you look like a soldier. You have a helmet, jacket, the eye suit, everything. Very heavy. I'm a short guy, too. Heavy for me. And I play every day with a soldier, like a couple of miles. Oh my God, my body so tired. But I'm a young man, you know. And either you at the Army or Marine, South Vietnamese, they take care of me very well. They help me a lot for my picture. Good. That's why I make all the picture because the Vietnam War, all Americans saw you help me, and either Vietnamese saw you. I'm going to ask both Nick and David one more question, then we're going to open it up for the audience. And the question is making the transition. After you make the transition out of Vietnam and what did you, how did that transition help you do other things in your life? How did that? Because David, you talked about Mr. Ford and where you were. So I'd like you to share that story with the audience. I think that's a profound story. Well, when I came back from Vietnam in 73, I was over there a little more than two years. I actually had come back after I won the Pulitzer. I'd been in Vietnam for a year and a half when I came back to the States. And I came back to the States and all I wanted to do was turn around and go back. I literally cut the trip short. I was not comfortable in the States. It's as if the war wasn't going on. And I kept looking around. Why weren't people more concerned about this? And it was really uncomfortable for me. And the only people that had any empathy for what I was going through were my friends who'd been in Vietnam. But that was it. And there were other photographers. Bill Snead who just passed away was one of them. And Dirk Halstead was a mentor of mine. But I went back. And then as the war started to wind down, the story really was evolving in the United States with Watergate and all that. So I came back. And one thing led to another fast forward. I became President Ford's White House photographer. And what happened at that point was Vietnam started unraveling. I went on a trip with General Frederick Wyand, dispatched by the President to see if there was anything that could be done to try to stem the tide of advancing North Vietnamese. They'd taken over Da Nang and started to move south. And I went around. Individually, I went to several places. I went over to Cambodia. Air America flew me there. The place was totally surrounded. You couldn't get into Nong Pen, unless you had a special aircraft. And in fact, the guy didn't even stop. I had to hop out in front of the terminal. He said he'd take me over there, but he wasn't stopping. I was like, Jesus, next time I'm going first class. But I saw what was happening. And the President wanted another point of view from someone who didn't have a dog in the hut, not the military. And strangely, there were two high-ranking CIA agents or executives on the plane. And Frank Sneps here today, who was a young CIA officer in Saigon at the time, whom I met at the time. And after I got back, the CIA had always had it almost to the nth degree about straight scoop about what was going on. The military always had another point of view, and I'm not condemning the military. And to hear it inside the White House, all those different points of view, I told the President when I got back that I thought my estimation from all my worldly experience was of Vietnam. And he wrote this in his book, by the way, so I'm not telling stories out of school. I'm always careful about that. But he quoted me as saying, Mr. President of Vietnam, it's only got three or four weeks left, and anyone who tells you differently is bullshitting you. And three and a half weeks later, it fell. And there were other people thinking they could perhaps contain it and all that. But what we had talked about was I was in the room when the President made the decision to end the war in Vietnam. It was an NSC meeting in the Roosevelt room under a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt, the most one of the most active U.S. presidents ever charged the hill. And the picture that I sticks with beyond that was there's the director of the CIA and the Deputy Secretary of the Secretary of Defense, Stade Kissinger, who was sitting here last night, Nelson Rockefeller, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the President and me taking pictures, and no one was saying anything. It was right after the President made the decision to start the withdrawal. And then it went through the next 40, 36 hours or so. One of the stories we didn't hear from Secretary Kissinger last night, which would have been really interesting for you all, was how Kissinger went out and announced that the withdrawal was a success, all the Americans were out. And then went back and got a bulletin that said there are 25 American Marines on the embassy rooftop who had been brought out. See this is why I love being a photographer because there were some really interesting photographs of that moment and ultimately you had to go and correct that one. But being someone who had been in Vietnam as a photographer when I went back on that trip Vietnamese friends were asking me to take their kids out. It was really emotionally difficult. And what I showed the President when I came back were the photographs that I took of refugees, of wounded people in Phnom Penh. And I put the photographs that replaced all those cheery photos in the West Wing of state dinners and all that with these bleak black and white photographs that I had taken on the trip. The night they went up someone took them all down and the President heard about that and got incredibly angry and said you've got to put those pictures back up. I want everybody in this building to know what's going on over there. And I think the pictures because the subject of this is about the effect of pictures on people when I showed him what was going on and I don't think anybody's ever made a report to the President of the United States like that and a trusted person that he really saw what was happening with the Vietnamese people and in part people told me this later that he was so moved by it that he continued to see to it that more Vietnamese were evacuated from Vietnam. When I look at what's going on today with refugees and all that and this phobia about refugees coming to this country it makes me sick really because the Vietnamese community the Vietnamese community has been one of the strongest elements of American society. I think Nick and I have you know, forgot frequently and we both live in California and it's vibrant. I'm working right now on a project with the Vietnamese it was a PhD work for NASA was involved with the Mars rover program on and on and on and but I'm really happy that I had some minor role to play in that. Thank you. Nick how about you, how did you make that transition out to where you are today? Before the course I go on I had first January my AP the right story about refugees in the center of Vietnam and then everywhere. They applied with the American flight tiger and then I shot how refugees run and then to the airport then I took a lot of pictures there, follow them from there to Karin Bay, Dalat everywhere. Then February I'd be center of Vietnam like Pleiku South Vietnamese general, friend of my General Dong, he told me he had to leave. I said why? He said Nick, this very danger the last day. I said this finish Vietnam over. He told me then he came himself after friend of my general. Then they applied them there, helicopter, pick up a wretch, you see one picture, leave the girl I shot the helicopter I think that how the people died running them Pleiku there were so many and the helicopter carried like 30 people, they can own the helicopter and a lot of people bought out of the helicopters, you know. Nick, was your part of your family left behind? I had to some of my family but they were all old people you know my father my father went long time ago, a few couple of others, they were alive today then I go back to Vietnam almost every year for cover story for AAP I travel with some former U.S. Marine for a land mine, M.I. story I travel ten years how you went travel in Hanoi, in your little border China in Vietnam, I make all the land mine story and look for the M.A. So you keep continuing to go back? Continue, yeah. Well, this has been a pretty special interview for me, I hope it's been for you. We'd like to take some questions. The picture there, the picture with you is that Kim Phuk there? Yes. Yeah. You all mentioned several iconic pictures and how they were interpreted when used. Eddie Adams is a particular instance where I think he regretted to a great extent the way that picture influenced the outcomes particularly the reputation of General Lone Do you have any comment or opinions on how your pictures ended up because unlike the written journalist we just talked to, you had no control over how people looked at your pictures. What is the exact questions? They're gonna hear well. Yeah. Unlike the journalists in print you have little control about how people viewed and used your pictures. Do you have any feelings about, for example the picture of the night-bomb girl you had people confessing to be responsible for that happening when they were nowhere near what happened nowhere near the event. But I think it's the beauty of photography is like everybody can make up their own mind about it. I mean we take the pictures and put them out like with Nick and I've talked about this in some length was he took the photograph because it was happening it wasn't to make a point or a political point and that picture has been controversial certainly but I think we appreciate that our pictures can agitate can make people get emotional about it and say whatever they want. I hadn't intended to cast any aspersions on your work. No, we didn't get that. It was a good question. Thank you. First of all, thank you very much for coming here today. I'm a Ph.D. student in journalism here at UT working on a dissertation actually on photojournalism and my question for both of you is kind of tied in to what I'm intrigued with is the comparison between being the reporter with the camera and the artist with the camera. How much are you conscious of the composition and here you are in a war circumstance and it's happening all around you and yet you go to raise that camera in front of you what are you trying to see what are you trying to isolate if that's something that comes into your mind when you do that. That's why God created cropping for me. I think both Nick and I were like we're just happy to get something in there that we could deal with later but the composition for me it's really important if you could do it. It's the rare case where a picture is framed perfectly like the girl running down the road or anything. What you were talking about about how you see it artistically is not a word that goes through my mind at that moment usually. Again it goes back to what I said earlier Nick and I are both professional photographers. We're both actually I spent five years of wire photography. Really our job is to show you something that we saw. It's that simple I mean don't you think? Picture showing a story. Every now and then. Sometimes not always the right story but Yes sir. Thank you very much for coming today. I really appreciate it it's quite fascinating, very interesting. My question was when you were in country were there any areas that you were specifically forbidden to go to or simply explicitly told that you should not or were there any subjects or areas that you felt were off limits that perhaps that wouldn't be beneficial for your camera? Good question. Well and I know we're talking about like the coverups on the government side and all that. My experience was I found the military incredibly helpful to go if you wanted to go hit your right on a chopper if you were stupid enough or excited enough to try to get into action you could get there. If there were Americans or Vietnamese soldiers I never had one instance where I wasn't able to go where I wanted to go see what I wanted to see and one of the profound experiences that I had was when I'd show up in the field American GIs that first when they got over the shock of seeing somebody that didn't have to be there showing up and questioning our intelligence I'm sure they were happy to know that there was someone there telling their story to show the world what was going on to them and I had almost a hundred percent really good cooperation from the government that didn't extend to what reporters were the briefings that were going on in Washington and all that but by the time I got over there and it was the last time by the way this has not happened since where we just had a free hand to go where we wanted to go but there was never if you had the wherewithal to get into somewhere and usually the photographers would always be going to where the action was you could do it and did you ever have an instance where people kept you out somewhere? It was so easy, they helped me a lot we had a military media called Muff B I'm a saigoner, if I want to go to the center of Vietnam, Da Nang, Hue or Pleiku when stretching you take C-130 or C-123 you fly right away we don't have any trouble and even when I have a son or a Marine they all welcome me, take a picture I don't have trouble the big problem is when you got there that was the problem getting there wasn't a problem today more difficult like why I get to stand I think your election from Vietnam War I don't think there are media more freedom to travel with a soldier you call it a poor camera we have time for one more question clarification question, I wasn't clear what happened to the young girl that was burned so badly did she survive is she still alive could you tell us something about that? that's a picture of her by the way the photo was Nick and Kim Folk she's still alive today, she's now 54 she lives in Toronto, Canada one a week she came here this week but she's speaking to Barton yesterday and she married her two children and she travels everywhere in America, talk about her picture and she's still suffering from those burns she still has great pain from the burns so I want to thank, this has been a privilege to be on the stage with you all and I really want to thank you for coming and thank you as well I have a few announcements okay you can come up afterwards perhaps and ask because what we're going to be doing now is right after this there's going to be a ceremony of the pinning of Vietnam vets so if there's any vets in the audience to go and mark up to Grove is going to be awarding them the pin and I'd like to also recognize the Vietnam vets that are in the audience if they're here can you please stand and we can celebrate you so thank you all very much for coming we really appreciate it and there was the last question if you want to come up we can take that question where you go, thank you Nick