After the Fall

Every day for a decade, images of the faraway country came flooding into the U.S. on tape and film and photographic paper, pictures of Viet Nam by the hundred gross. Bit by visual bit, Americans accrued a vivid (if distorted) portrait of the country where their sons and husbands were dying, a terrifying multimedia montage of nervous teenage heroes behind sandbags, of Saigon's beleaguered charm, of a green, green countryside with helicopters hovering everywhere.

When the war stopped, so did this vast torrent of images to the West. Both sides seemed complicit in the blackout: the Vietnamese victors were not especially eager for skeptical foreigners to photograph their land, and the foreigners were not all that interested anyway--since when has peace been newsworthy? Out of sight was not quite out of mind, but close. Now, however, thanks to an anniversary marking the end of a wrenching war, the pictures have begun to flow again, giving Americans another look at a country they knew so well--and knew hardly at all.