Larry Burrows: Vietnam

By BRETT PHIBBS

Larry Burrows, photojournalist, first went to Vietnam in 1962 to cover the conflict for Life magazine. He embraced Vietnam as his own, adopting it through the lens of his camera.

"Thank God it isn't my war," he told a Life magazine colleague who had asked how the war was going. But it was a war that, in 1971, would claim his life.

Vietnam is broken into 11 stunning photo essays. Storytelling was his forte: from the disturbing image of a woman mourning the loss of her husband, to the poignant photo essay he shot in 1965 aboard the chopper Yankee Papa 13 where he photographed a day with Lance Corporal James Farley, a 21-year-old helicopter gunner.

With Farley's all-American-boy looks, Burrows likened him to "the kid next door".

During that day of terrible combat, Burrows watched and recorded, through his camera, a boy being transformed into a man. The essay is a classic.

The book is beautifully presented, from the cover image of a soldier's face - of innocence and youth - through the quality of experience no man should have to live through or witness, to the thumbnail captions at the end.

To single out one image for special mention would be foolish and near impossible.

The surreal battlefield photographs have the quality of a master craftsman at work - impeccable lighting and composition, use of colour, all achieved under extreme conditions.

Burrows had a knack for seeing through the guns and Hollywood of war to the little people, to witness and document their war with dignity, humanity and the sense of art they and it deserved.

"This book is his last testament," his Vietnam colleague David Halberstam says in the introduction. I would die to have this book as my "last testament". Too bad Larry Burrows had to.

History has lost a true artist, but it has gained a brilliant book. A collectors' must.

* Jonathan Cape, $120

* Brett Phibbs is a New Zealand Herald photographer.