Who, what, where, why and when?

As part of a marketing course I once took, everyone in the class was asked to give a lecture on how a completely accurate, un-retouched photograph could be used to sell a point of view contrary to what was actually being shown.

To this day, I'm not entirely sure what the professor was looking for, but when it came time to give our lecture, most of the class used cigarette and liquor ads to demonstrate how it was possible to make something demonstratively harmful appear pleasurable and even attractive.

I took my lecture in a completely different direction.  And to this day, when I'm confronted with someone waving a picture or film in my face to 'prove' Israeli wrong-doing, I trot out that lecture.  For the sake of time-saving, it occurred to me that I might as well enshrine the lecture here so that it can be easily accessed for future reference:

Most of you are likely familiar with the following Pulitzer Price winning photograph, which is one of the most famous images in the history of photo-journalism:

This photograph, taken by Eddie Adams on February 1, 1968 in Saigon, was not staged, retouched or in any way manipulated.  In fact, the photo is doubly remarkable for the fact that the scene - the summary execution of a handcuffed prisoner -  took place in full view of, and close proximity to, a still photographer from the Associated Press, and a TV cameraman from NBC, both of whom documented the event.

What the photograph shows is General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, the Republic of Vietnam's (also known as South Vietnam) Chief of National Police, the instant after he pulled the trigger of his personal sidearm, sending a single bullet through the head of  Nguyễn Văn Lém, a captured Viet Cong fighter (I use the word advisedly instead of 'soldier' since this man, like many in that, and subsequent conflicts, is not wearing a uniform or any insignia)..

Careful study of the photo actually reveals the fired bullet exiting the other side of the prisoner's head, and the dying man's features are contorted in an involuntary grimace of pain.

The photo, along with the footage filmed by the NBC TV cameraman, was transmitted and viewed around the world, and is widely considered the turning point in American public opinion against the war in Vietnam.  By most objective standards, the photograph perfectly demonstrates the brutality of our South Vietnamese allies, as well as the gratuitous violence inherent throughout that particular conflict.  It made Suburban America begin to wonder what place we had in such a war.

But let's talk a little bit about the back-story - the five W's of the picture.  Every photograph has a back-story, but some are less obvious than others... making it hard to trust one's first impressions.  For instance, unless a photograph happens to capture a calendar, a bank clock or say, a famous newspaper headline, it is hard to know 'when' a picture was taken.

And while we think we know 'what' is happening in the photo (an execution), and if we managed to read a paragraph or two of the news article, we might even know the 'who' in this case (South Vietnamese Police Chief kills a North Vietnamese fighter).  However the less known 'when' and 'where' are not only significant... but almost universally forgotten/ignored:

You'll recall that I mentioned earlier that the picture was taken on February 1st, 1968 in Saigon.  This information is significant because the Tet Offensive, a well coordinated countrywide North Vietnamese attack, was launched the day before, on January 31, 1968.

The offensive was named for Tết Nguyên Đán, the first day of the year on a traditional lunar calendar and the most important Vietnamese holiday.

In previous years, both sides in the Vietnam conflict had observed a period of relative calm in honor of the Tet holiday.  But in 1968, the north made a strategic decision to try to use the holiday to catch the US and south Vietnamese off guard and spark a countrywide violent uprising that would quickly win the war.

Although coordinated attacks were taking place throughout the country, the focus of the Tet offensive was Saigon, where in less than 24 hours, General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan saw his capital city go from holiday quiet to unrestricted attacks by armed Viet Cong insurgents against both military and civilian centers.

So now we are pretty sure we know the 'who', 'what', 'when' and 'where' related to this famous photo.  But what most people don't know is the 'why'.   And once you learn the 'why', it might make you stop to wonder if you really had all of the information about the other 'W's.

As impossible a request as it may seem, try to put yourself in the position of the South Vietnamese National Police Chief 18 hours after the start of the Tet Offensive.  You are tasked with trying to protect the lives and property of Saigon's citizens in the midst of unprecedented country-wide attacks.  You are getting reports from all quarters that fighting is raging out of control, and that atrocities are being conducted against military, municipal and civilian targets throughout the capital.

Not only are city and government officials being targeted by roving death squads, but their families are also being slaughtered (think Baghdad on a bad day or Mogadishu on a good one).

A contemporary report, which was corroborated by the photographer at the time, states:

"Nguyễn Văn Lém [the executed man] commanded a Viet Cong death squad, which on that day had murdered South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their stead, the police officers' families; these sources said that Lém was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives, some of whom were the families of General Nguyễn's deputy and close friend, and six of whom were Nguyễn's godchildren."

Now, to review... the city for which you are the paramilitary commander is under armed attack from within.  Police stations are ablaze, the normal chain of command is disintegrating around you and there is little or no possibility of apprehending and detaining the enemy, even if you can catch them.

You've just come upon the slaughtered bodies of your friends, colleagues (including your second in command) and their families, and the leader of the group that perpetrated the massacre has been captured in the act and brought before you.  There is nowhere secure to take the prisoner, and the chances of reaching a secure destination with the prisoner is in doubt, even if one existed.  You are armed.

What do you do?

I'm not saying that executing the prisoner is the right call.  As much as I've asked you to put yourself in the Police chief's position, it is an impossible request.  Without having been that person at that time and place, we can't know what we'd do.

However, having more information at our disposal and using it in an attempt to understand the motivation behind an action captured on a single frame of film, suddenly muddies the whole 'good guy' 'bad guy' aspect of the photograph, no?  In fact, it makes us go back and want to pick at some of the other 'W" questions, especially the 'who?' aspect of what we thought we knew.

General General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan was a widely respected both as a soldier and as a police chief.  He was an outspoken advocate of building more hospitals for Vietnam's rural provinces, and was considered by his countrymen to be a Vietnamese patriot... so much so that the (then US president) Johnson administration viewed him as a thorn in their side for not allowing US officials under his jurisdiction autonomy of action in criminal and civil matters.

A few months after the famous photo was taken, General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan was photographed again, this time being carried by an Australian foreign correspondent after having been hit by machine gun fire (the general lost a leg due to his wounds).

For his part, the photographer who snapped the award-winning shot of the execution has been quoted as saying, “Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan”    Having personally witnessed the motivation for the General's actions, Adams was devastated by the nearly universal condemnation of the man afterwards.

Adams went on to say later:

       “The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths … What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?"

       "General Loan was what you would call a real warrior, admired by his troops. I’m not saying what he did was right, but you have to put yourself in his position…This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn’t taken the picture, someone else would have, but I’ve felt bad for him and his family for a long time. I had kept in contact with him; the last time we spoke was about six months ago, when he was very ill. I sent flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, “I’m sorry. There are tears."

When Saigon fell, General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan managed (without official US assistance) to escape and ended up being the proprietor of a pizza shop in Virginia.  He died of cancer on July 14, 1998.  Adams, died in 2004 of Lou Gehrig's Disease

The New York Times, which was one of countless publications to have printed the iconic picture of the execution without even an attempt at context, offered the following in the way of an obituary:

Nguyen Ngoc Loan, 67, Dies; Executed Viet Cong Prisoner

Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the quick-tempered South Vietnamese national police commander whose impromptu execution of a Viet Cong prisoner on a Saigon street in the Tet offensive of 1968 helped galvanize American public opinion against the war, died on Tuesday at his home in Burke, Va. He was 67 and had operated a pizza parlor in nearby Dale City.  [source]

What we take from this story are the words of the photographer himself:  "Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. ... [they] do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths."

[Source of other information here and here]