Today is the 40th anniversary of this image taken by photojournalist Eddie Adams in 1968. I learned this after listening to a story on NPR this morning. While I listened, I was surprised at how vividly I recalled the image. All of the small details were inside my head. The facial expressions, the flannel shirt, the casual manner of the executioner. It was literally burned into my head.
I remember how shocking this image was when I first saw it in a high school textbook. It stood out from everything else on the page. I remember feeling like I wasn’t supposed to see it, like it should be locked away in Nixon’s old file cabinets or something. The fact that the man being shot is a Viet Cong adds another layer of depth and complexity to this image. I always assumed that the man with the gun was the “bad guy”. It’s a simple enough assumption. Anyone who executes another man in cold blood has to be bad, right? And he’s so casual about it. It’s really chilling. But he’s on our side. Lock and load.
