Philip Jones Griffiths
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Philip Jones Griffiths (b. 1936) is a Welsh-born photojournalist known for his coverage of the Vietnam war.
Griffiths studied pharmacy but started as a freelance photographer in 1961, traveling to Algeria in 1962. He arrived in Vietnam in 1966, working for the Magnum agency.
Magnum found his images difficult to sell to American magazines, as they concentrated on the suffering of the Vietnamese people and reflected Griffiths's view of the war as an episode in the continuing decolonisation of former European possessions. He was able to get a 'scoop' that the American outlets liked, photographs of Jackie Kennedy vacationing with a male friend in Cambodia. The proceeds of these photos enabled him to continue his coverage of Vietnam and to publish Vietnam Inc. in 1971. The book had a major influence on American perceptions of the war,[1] and became a classic of photojournalism. In 2001 the book was reprinted with a foreword by Noam Chomsky.
Subsequent books have included Dark Odyssey, a collection of Griffiths's best pictures, and Agent Orange, dealing with the impact of the US defoliant Agent Orange on postwar generations in Vietnam.
[edit] Notes
[edit] Sources
- "Directory of notable photographs: Philip Jones Griffiths", Photography.about.com.
- "Vietnam Inc. Part II: A Photo-Journey through the Villages, Fields, and Alleys of a Devastated Nation", Democracy Now!, 24 January 2002.
- Schulz, Constance B. "Philip Jones Griffiths." Robin Lenman, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-866271-6
