David Douglas Duncan - I Protest! - 1968

As Parr and Badger note "David Douglas Duncan published I Protest! as an outcry against the Vietnam War, not from the point of view of an anti-war liberal, but from, so to speak, the centre right. Its politics apart - and in view of recent events in the Middle East, they are at the very least interesting - this remains one of the best photovooks to emerge from the war, both in terms of Duncan's powerful photographs and its design and production. It is a modestly produced paperback, yet features an elegant standard of reproduction - in short, it is a model for a photobook intended to reach out to a large audience and make a didactic point.

The book is constructed around Duncan's experiences at the battle of Khe Sank, one of the few pitched battles in what, for the American forces, was a new kind of war, where the enemy was not obvious, tending to strike quickly and melt away, thus negating the overwhelmingly superior of the United States. The 77-day siege of Khe Sanh by the North Vietnamese army was the largest and most defined battle of the war to date, and Duncan was 'embedded' with the US troops inside the encircled garrison in Khe Sanh.

It is the troops upon which Duncan (as always) concentrates his camera. Khe Sanh, and the deadly Tet Offensive that preceded it, were major shocks to American morale, demonstrating that the troops were up against a determined and well-organised army, On one dat at Khe Sanh, the communist forces poured over 100 artillery rounds an hour into the garrison. Duncan, who wad proud to be a marine and to share the troops' hardshi, shows us, as he did in Korea, the faces of men under severe pressure but doing their jobs, many being maimed and many dying. It is a pro-army book, without being gung-ho. Certainly, as he stated in his text, Duncan was no 'peacenik, Vietnik, Pinkie, Commie, liberal'. But he passionately believed that Vietnam , unlike Korea, was a foreign adventure too far, and that holding Khe Sanh was not worth the deaths of so many young Americans. He also believed there were better places to stem the tide of communism and, as he stated eloquently in I Protest!, that in South Vietnam the United States had involved itself in the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." (Parr and Badger)

Known by many as a friend of Picasso as well as his photo-documentarian, Duncan was just as well known as a combat photographer. Beginning in WWII, he served as an officer in the Marines, photographing the American invasions of the Solomon Islands and Okinawa. By the Vietnam War his objectivity waned; this collection became an appeal for mainstream Americans to question the wisdom of the US military invasion in Vietnam. As a combat photographer, the author presents his photographs taken during an 8-day span in February of 1968 within the Khe Sanh combat zone of Vietnam in honor of the men who fought there. He wrote the text before the Khe Sanh siege was lifted, and for many the help that came was too late.

Included in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Vol.2, p.248

Condition:
First edition, first printing from 1968 in very good condition. Minor edgewear to cover. Binding tight. Please examine listing photos carefully.