man & nature # 29 ~ punctum

The Au Sable River, Keesville • click
to embiggenRecently, I been receiving a fair number of emails from Landscapist visitors. As time allows, I am trying to respond to each and every one. If you have send me an email and I have yet to respond, hang in there - a response will be forthcoming.

One email from a regular visitor and occasional commentor, Don / Scoop, caught my attention in a big way. Don wrote:

I have started another photo blog about my time in Vietnam. I have many, many pictures and slides to sort through. I know you are very busy but if you could take a look at my blog and let me know what you think it would be really appreciated.

I have taken a look at Don's blog. In fact, more than once. It is still in a fledgling stage - Don has only posted a very small number of what is apparently a rather substantial number of pictures he has from his days in Vietnam (March 1969-February 1970). Nevertheless, the pictures that are posted have struck me in a very powerful way.

Unlike Don who enlisted in the Marines, I was drafted (1966) into the Army during the Vietnam War. Unlike Don, I was not a combat infantryman. And, unlike Don, I did not spend any appreciable time in Vietnam. My time in Vietnam can be measured hours, not days, months or years.

Like Don, I also always carried a camera with me. Unlike Don, who carried his camera while he was doing his duty as a machinegunner, I carried mine while doing my duty as a photographer.

All of that said, Don's picture are amongst the most powerful I have ever encountered. For me, they contain a punctum - that accident which pricks, bruises me." It is the unintentional detail that could not not be taken, and that "fills the whole picture." - that reaches to the very core of my being.

The unintentional detail that pricks and bruises me in Don's pictures is the palpable sensation I have in the pit of stomach of raw anxiety and fear coupled with a nearly overwhelming feeling of there but for the grace of god ....

It's the exact same sensations and feeling that I experienced - very unexpectedly - upon seeing for the first time the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC - all those names, all those dead people, most of whom died horrible deaths coupled with the realization that my name could easily have been on that wall. I was emotionally overwhelmed. I was stunned. And I was struck by the notion of what could have been.

Don's pictures trigger the same reaction, but in different manner. They put faces and places on the names. I can't help but wonder which faces made it out alive and which ones had but a short time to live. Which ones would never see their family and loved ones again. Thoughts of children who would never get to know their fathers. And of Vietnamese children who would also die horrible deaths.

Although I did not face a bullet fired at me in combat, I still have a very vivid sense of "surviving" that war. I think there is more than little sense of "survivor's guilt" at play. Hell, while many of my generation were slogging through that war, some dying, others physically and emotionally maimed and crippled, some surviving, I was was mucking around in Japan, living with my (now ex)wife in a comfy little Japanese-style apartment doing my duty with a camera concerned with f/stops, shutter speeds, and focus.

So, Don - I love the blog and your photographs. They are a very powerful testament to what was and, for me, what could have been. I will follow the blog with intense interest and if you need help scanning please let me know.

Your pictures are a true and powerful embodiment of Diane Arbus' statement:

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.

Keep posting and showing us things that most have never seen.

You can see Don's blog HERE.

Comments

[Don]

Mark thank you very much for those kind words, coming from someone like you means so much to me I really appreciate it, for once in my life I am a loss for something to say.
Actually I didn't think about my time in Vietnam when I was there, I was thinking more about my new 1969 Camaro SS sitting home, then came the landing on the moon that I missed, and my sister telling me about her adventures in Woodstock.
I will get back to you on the slides that I need to scan, as far as negatives, I was not very good with those but I will keep posting.
Thank you again for looking at my blog and giving me the exposure to all your readers.
Don