Philip Jones Griffiths

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philip Jones Griffiths (b. 1936) is a Welsh-born photojournalist famous for his coverage of the Vietnam war, and in particular for his book Vietnam Inc. (1971).

Griffiths studied pharmacy but started as a freelance photographer in 1961. He worked in Algeria in 1962. He arrived in Vietnam in 1966, working for the Magnum agency, of which he became a full member in 1971. Magnum found his images difficult to sell to American magazines (the most important market), as they concentrated on the suffering of the Vietnamese people and clearly reflected Griffiths's own view of the war as an episode in the continuing decolonisation of former European possessions. Fortuitously, he was able to get a 'scoop' that the American outlets liked - Jackie Kennedy holidaying with a male friend in Cambodia - and the proceeds enabled him to continue his coverage of Vietnam and to publish Vietnam Inc. in 1971. The book had a major influence on American perceptions of the war,^[1] and became a classic of photojournalism; it was republished in 2001 with a foreword by Noam Chomsky.

Subsequent books have included Dark Odyssey, a collection of Griffiths's best pictures, and Agent Orange, dealing with the impact of the US defoliant Agent Orange on postwar generations in Vietnam.