My First Day in Vietnam, Mekong Delta, Vietnam

1964

Not on view

The most acclaimed British photojournalist of the twentieth century, Don McCullin established his reputation in the 1960s with his stunning combat photographs of the war in Vietnam. At 83 years old, having photographed wars in Vietnam, Cyprus, the Congo, and Biafra, he is a living legend in Great Britain. This acquisition will bring to the Metropolitan among his most lauded works from the start of his more than half-century of picturing making. The brutal story of the Vietnam War are primarily remembered not from the shocking and confusing images broadcast on network television fifty years ago, but those still images by photographers such as Eddie Adams, Larry Burrows, Philip Jones Griffiths, Nick Ut, and McCullin that made their way into magazines and newspapers. These are the images that made history and retain their authority long after the headlines of the conflict have faded from our collective consciousness. Of those that show the effect of war on the survivors, perhaps none is as primal as McCullin’s "Shell Shocked Marine" from 1968, a close up study of an exhausted American soldier staring lost into the camera, gripping his rifle, a painful exemplar of what the medical community now terms "post-traumatic stress syndrome."

Artwork Details

Overview

Provenance

Title: My First Day in Vietnam, Mekong Delta, Vietnam
Artist: Don McCullin (British, born 1935)
Date: 1964
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: approx. 8 1/8 x 12 in. (20.6 x 30.3 cm)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society, Jennifer and Philip Maritz, Jade Lau, Stephanie and Robert Olmsted, and Tianaderrah Foundation Gifts, 2019
Object Number: 2019.312
Rights and Reproduction: © Don McCullin
Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

By Don McCullin

In the same medium

From the same time and place

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Corpse of North Vietnamese Soldier Surrounded by Debris Left by US Soldiers Looking for Souvenirs, Hue

Don McCullin

1968

Sheep Going to Slaughter, Early Morning, Near the Caledonian Road, London, Don McCullin British, Gelatin silver print — Sheep Going to Slaughter, Early Morning, Near the Caledonian Road, London
Don McCullin
1965

Dying Cambodian Paratrooper Hit by the Same Mortar Shell that Hit McCullin, Don McCullin British, Gelatin silver print — Dying Cambodian Paratrooper Hit by the Same Mortar Shell that Hit McCullin
Don McCullin
1970

Campden Hill, London, Bill Brandt British, born Germany, Gelatin silver print — Campden Hill, London
Bill Brandt
April 1949

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