photojournalism

This book is good. I liked it. I like war books and movies because action is cool! The guns were the old kinds, like M60 machine guns. It was very bloody and contained torture, which seemed very real to me in a gruesome kind of way.

I recommend this book to people who like war stories because it tells the truth about war.

The Vietnam war was defined as the first total media war, television was in the ascendancy but it was through newspapers and magazines that most people got there view of the suffering. The three greatest war photographers of all time (Robert Capa is the forth) brought the war to the breakfast tables of the world, Phillip Jones Griffiths, Donald McCullin and Larry Burrows produced pictures which showed the true horror and futility of the Vietnam conflict. McCullin through the pages of the Sunday Times Magazine, Jones Griffiths with his book "Vietnam Inc" and Burrows in the pages of "Life" magazine. Larry Burrows was given the massive task of showing the war in colour. Colour was regarded as being too pretty for the hard hitting task of showing war, also the actual technical limitations of the colour film of the time made Burrows task even more difficult. The sensitivity was very slow and getting the exposure absolutely spot on was imperitive. The steadyness and consideration needed to get the pictures are not condusive to the nerves in the midst of combat but Burrows had the metal to get the job done. This book brings together his work from 1963 till his death in 1971 in a way that shows not only his skill as a photographer but also as a journalist who could visualise the images and create the difinitive "picture story" The reproduction and layout are excellent and to see the images virtually as they would have appeared in Life are a credit to Larry's son Russell. This is a must for anyone interested in photography and photojournalism.

This book is an awesome collection of great photos. Larry Burrows did a fabulous job at capturing real life experiences in Vietnam. I commend him and David Halberstam for their professionalism and commitment to those soldiers who fought and died for our country. I only wish the descriptive captions were listed near the large photos in the book, not the back of the book. I'm sure the author had a reason for this. I strongly recommend this book.