AGENT ORANGE: "COLLATERAL DAMAGE" IN VIET NAM PHOTOGRAPHS BY PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS TROLLEY ...
BETWEEN 1962 AND 1969, the United States sprayed 12 million gallons of the herbicide Agent Orange over 20,000 villages in South Vietnam. The idea was that if forest cover and food crops were destroyed, villagers would be forced into hamlets controlled by U.S. forces, thus depriving Viet Cong guerrillas of sanctuary. It didn't work, but the legacy of Agent Orange still haunts southern Vietnam. A word has even been created to describe this legacy: ecocide. The Geneva Accords were changed to prevent it from ever happening again.
Present in Agent Orange was dioxin, a toxin with a half-life of one decade in humans; two parts per trillion in the blood are enough to mutate cells. Not surprisingly, given the quantity used, dioxin continues to mutate the cells of tens of thousands of Vietnamese, something Welsh photographer Philip Jones Griffiths documents with obvious compassion in this infuriating collection of black and whites.
Griffiths' camera captures what most of the world and the U.S. in particular would rather forget: Six percent of all schoolchildren in South Vietnam have congenital malformations; four percent of all pregnancies end prematurely by hydatidiform (the fetus just dissolves) and miscarriage, while a higher number are stillborn or have hydroencephalitis (extreme swelling of the brain). Dangerously high levels of dioxin are still found in local fish and animals, as well as rivers and soil and breast milk, through which dioxin continues its assault on the future. In areas subjected to Agent Orange, myriad afflictions are commonplace among those who survive birth: spina bifida, skin diseases, retardation, liver cancer. Many are born without eyes or eye lenses or limbs; Siamese twins are common. Griffiths documents all of this up close, challenging us to confront it with him. It is not always an easy challenge to meet.
As heart-wrenching as these photos are, Griffiths also means them as a warning. Dioxin is a byproduct of all chlorine-based chemical production. It is produced along with, and is present in, thousands of household products, including plastics. The EPA says dioxin could be responsible for a quarter of all cancers in America. "Viet Nam is the ultimate laboratory where the clues to dioxin's murderous progression can be discovered," writes Griffiths. "[R]egrettably?it is [an opportunity] that is not being acted upon."
Whatever aspect of Griffiths' story the reader focuses on-past, present, future-his lens doesn't lie. It terrifies and it bleeds.
Philip Jones Griffiths' prints will be on sale at trolleybooks.com starting Tues., May 18. Proceeds will be donated to the victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam.