How Photography From the Vietnam War Changed America. “The images changed how the world saw Vietnam, but especially how Americans saw their country, soldiers and the war itself, which ended 50 years ago this month.”
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Comments 2
I honestly wonder what our modern-day equivalent would be. Which is to say, what medium or paradigm shift would cause most people to shift their beliefs on an issue to the degree that they did on the Vietnam War? In America, at least, I don't feel as though the public can really be reached anymore, at least 1/3 of it, anyway. There are plenty of horrifying images from detention centers, El Salvador, etc, for example, and even more horrific ones from Gaza...and the needle hasn't really moved all that much, at least from an approval number perspective. On the digital front, we know without a doubt that slimey (desperate?) billionaires like Zuckerberg are actively putting their finger on the scale to **checks notes** hyper-sexualize their chatbots, even for underage Meta users. And yet...
Or am I looking at this all wrong? That's certainly possible. Not the first time I'd have my head up my own ass on an issue. But, is there going to be a legitimate "X changed how America saw Y" as was the case in the 1960s? If there is, I'm actually quite anxious about what the scope of such an event might be.
I think there is no modern-day equivalent. People in positions of power learned their lessons in Vietnam, and one of those lessons was 'don't allow photojournalists unless they're suitably constrained'. The result of this is that, in later wars, images have fractured into two categories
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