Making art from war: Dark Odyssey, an exhibition at Presentation House, features images from the 40-year career of photojournalist Philip Jones Griffiths, including his haunting visions of the Vietnam War Final Edition

• Published in: The Vancouver sun (1986)
• Main Author: Michael Scott, Sun Art Critic
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vancouver, B.C Postmedia Network Inc 16.03.1999
• Subjects: Vietnam War; Vietnam; United Kingdom > UK; United States > US; Wales
• ISSN: 0832-1299

[Philip Jones Griffiths] stayed to take his picture and thousands more in the years he covered the war in Vietnam. The resulting chronicle of suffering, ruination, arrogance and inhumanity earned Jones Griffiths a place in the pantheon of photojournalism -- along with such gods as Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lange. Many of those Vietnam photographs, and dozens of others from a career that has lasted 40 years, are collected in Dark Odyssey, a survey of Jones Griffiths' work at Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver. In 1971, Jones Griffiths published a collection of his photographs, Vietnam Inc., a stinging indictment of the U.S. military enterprise in Southeast Asia. Chronicling the systematic deception of the American people about what was really going on in Vietnam, Jones Griffiths' book helped change U.S. attitudes. He was declared persona non grata by both the American military command and the government of South Vietnam. In his 60s, Jones Griffiths continues to trot the globe, his camera for hire. His most recent adventure was in the jungles of Colombia, where he was stalking a murderous paramilitary organization. But none of his later images seem as stark or prophetic as the Vietnam work. Those images prompted [Henri Cartier-Bresson], universally recognized as one of the greatest photographers of all time, to say of his protege: "Not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths."