Analysis Of Edward Adams's 'Saigon Execution'

“Saigon Execution” is a photograph that depicts the summary execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém by General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan in Saigon, on February 1, 1968, during the Viet Nam War. The picture was taken by American photographer and photojournalist Eddie Adams on a Saigon street while he was covering the Tet Offensive. On the second day of the Tet Offensive, Lém was captured and brought to Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Chief of the Republic of Vietnam National Police. Lem was the suspected leader of a death squad that had been targeting South Vietnamese National Police officers and their families. General Loan executed Lém in front of AP photographer Eddie Adams and NBC television cameraman Vo Suu. The photograph and footage were distributed worldwide. The photo is the most famous to be associated with the Tet Offensive and one of the most famous to be associated with the Viet Nam War. Adams won a 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his photograph.

“Edward Adams was born on June 12, 1933, in New Kensington, Pa., the son of Edward and Adelaide Adams. While in high school in New Kensington he joined the photography staff of the school newspaper, and after graduation he enlisted in the Marines and served for three years as a combat photographer in Korea.” It was being a Marine that would define him throughout his life. Adams went to Vietnam when the Marines went to Vietnam in 1965. Eddie Adams was a patriot, who unlike most of his fellow members of the press believed in the American Military and what it was doing in Vietnam.

“In a 45-year career, much of it spent in the front ranks of news photographers, he worked for The Associated Press, Time and Parade, covering 13 wars and amassing about 500 photojournalism awards. But it was a 196...

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...h accomplishments. He never considered himself to be a good man and even talked of his desire to photograph Hell when he got there. Adams would forever be a Marine, cynical, idealistic, brave, humble. His most famous photograph, Saigon Execution, would stay with him no matter how much he might try to disown it. In the end it was a good photograph. Well framed with the directional force of General Loan’s gun hand pointing at the other mans head. The lighting was fine, the composition aided by the man in the back reacting to the shooting. Adams always shot war in black and white, because he knew that color wasn’t need to tell the story. He managed to capture the shooting in Saigon in a fraction of a second before the blood even started to flow. Its ironic that after covering 13 wars, Adam’s most famous photograph was his most brutal, but it was also bloodless.