Collateral Damage
Two exhibits at Housatonic Community College that delve into the long-term consequences of war

by LuAnne Roy - December 1, 2005

PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS PHOTOS

The cost of chemical war: deformed babies left behind in Vietnam after the U.S. sprayed Agent Orange.

This year being the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, one would think there would finally be some resignation of the ill feelings surrounding the conflict. But there are still so many unresolved issues--including the lingering controversy over the United States' employment of the deadly chemical Agent Orange.

For decades Americans have heard of the adverse health effects of the herbicide that was used to defoliate the South Vietnamese jungles--stories of Vietnam vets with lung cancer, Hodgkin's disease, prostate cancer, and their children being born with diseases like spina bifida. To this day, affected veterans are battling for compensation from the government. But rarely do we hear reports of the harm inflicted on civilians living in Vietnam.

World-renowned Magnum photographer and war correspondent Philip Jones Griffiths addresses that situation in his book Agent Orange: Collatral Damage in Viet Nam , published two years ago, and some of those images have been garnered for display by Housatonic Community College's Burt Chernow Galleries.

As Americans we've become somewhat desensitized to viewing footage of genocides in places like Rwanda and Dafur, Sudan. What we're not prepared for is seeing images of mutilation that resulted from an action taken by our own country, which is what makes HCC's exhibit both enlightening and disturbing.

The exhibit illustrates the horrific consequences that resulted from the widespread spraying of Agent Orange (some 11.7 million gallons), predominantly in South Vietman. Its subjects are not war veterans who were exposed to the harmful chemical, but Vietnamese children born with deformities due not only to their parents' initial contact with it, but also from the continued saturation of land and contaminated water decades later.

It's these victims that Griffiths sought to document with his photos: children with no arms and legs, others with facial disfigurations, or stunted growth, of newborn babies with encephaletic heads. Griffiths also includes images of decimated farm lands and rice paddies that are still being replanted 30 years later.

One of the first images that greets you as you enter the room is that of a cute-faced boy with no arms or legs, sitting on the ground in what looks to be a diaper. The caption next to it informs that he is not as young as he appears, but actually 12 years old, and that he begs with his family in front of restaurants. On an opposing wall is a photo of a teenage girl propelling herself on a board with wheels. In the adjoining room, the photos are even more disturbing. One shows two malformed fetuses in a jar of formaldehyde facing each other, appearing to be in an embrace. Another depicts a set of male Siamese twins conjoined at the pelvis with one penis and one anus, three legs; the caption informs that one of them is brain dead.

In his book (which is on display in the gallery for perusing), Griffiths states he first heard reports from Ha Noi in 1967 claiming that millions of people had been victims of chemical warfare in South Vietnam. He relates that two years later, Saigon newspapers revealed startling photos of deformed babies born to women who had been sprayed with Agent Orange. A year later he heard stories about Vietnamese children born without eyes. Shortly after that Griffiths made several visits to hospitals in Vietnam, but was denied access. It wasn't until the war officially ended that he got to see the affected children with his own eyes.

Griffiths devoted the next 22 years to documenting their plight, stating in his book that his initial motivation was to "witness a staggering tragedy unfold." He published these photos because he wanted the world (particularly Americans) to know the truth about Agent Orange--the statistics that the U.S. government still denies and covers up. He wanted to make Americans aware that these unfortunate people have received no compensation from the U.S. government for its indiscriminate use of the chemical. And he also states that it took him 20 years to find someone who would publish his photos.

No matter how one views the exhibit, its anti-war and anti-Bush theme is apparent. On a table at the entrance, museum curator Robbin Zella has provided supplementary materials that reinforce that sentiment. One is a fact sheet of Vietnam War casualties compiled by Edward Tick, whose numbers indicate the disproportionate statistics regarding the amount of damage sustained by the United States as compared to that of Vietnam (such as, there were approximately 58,000 American soldiers killed in action as compared to 2.5 million Vietnamese; there were some 2,000 Americans reported missing in action as compared to 250,000 Vietnamese. Beginning to sound familiar?).

If that's not convincing enough, the gallery has a concurrent exhibit (located in the room leading into the Agent Orange exhibit), titled Icons of a New Century , whose predominant theme is images of war. Large white canvases with stark black renditions of helicopters--some depicting various views of landing gear, others focused on the rotors, and one (aptly titled "Swarm") a menacing swarm of helicopters. Other paintings and mixed media portray fighter jets, automatic weapons, oil storage tanks, oil drilling rigs, gas pumps and cowboys on horseback.

The two artists represented, Rob Roy and Matt Ernst, profess that it was not their intent to make any direct political statement or moral judgment. They merely wanted their art to reflect images and objects from our everyday experience, which just happen to be images of war. However, the fact that a large percentage of the exhibit is devoted to images of oil drums (a series of paintings titled "Witness")--some with cowboys painted on the sides, others decorated with soldiers bearing automatic weapons, others depicting yet more scenes of helicopters looming overhead, dropping what appears to be either bombs or chemicals--reveals that the artists wanted to say something about the constant presence of war imagery in our society.

What makes this especially disconcerting is that the exhibit as a whole is extremely colorful and appealing to the eye, unlike its neighboring exhibit. The "Witness" series is done in a variety of colors not unlike those found in a Crayola box--salmon, turquoise, tangerine. And two of the mixed media works are large wall installations that are essentially huge outlined pictures constructed with two-inch thick boxes pieced together to create a picture. One is in the shape of a large hand-gun, the other in the shape of a helicopter. The individual blocks making up the outline are colorfully painted with different scenes using all the aforementioned images of war.

When asked what statement HCC was making in its choice of exhibits, Zella says that she felt it her responsibility "to teach students what really happened in Vietnam," especially in context to the current war in Iraq.

"No one talks about the environmental damage... of the thousands of gallons of oil spilled in Kuwait," she states. "People don't think about the long-term consequences."

Zella said that she is, indeed, trying to make a statement about the Bush administration's lack of foresight, its lack of humanity, its lack of concern for the environment, its overall lack of responsibility. She wanted to point out the hypocrisy of the religious right's ideology, its pro-life stance and claim that every life is valuable--except, of course, Iraqi or Vietnamese lives.

According to Zella, the exhibit is also meant to be a wake-up call for people who are so consumed with their daily lives and consumer spending, that they fail to recognize that our society is moving backwards.

"My goal is to get people to think," she concludes.