H-21 Helicopter, Trà Bông

Date

1962

Creator

Over nine years, Larry Burrows created the definitive photojournalistic record of the American war in Vietnam. He first visited Southeast Asia in 1962, and realized immediately how important the helicopter was in the evolving conflict. To the rural Vietnamese it was a weapon of awesome, almost otherworldly power. The Army Piasecki H-21 Shawnee helicopter, with its two piston engines and overlapping rotor blades, could speed over the jungle at 2,000 feet, and then descend at 100 knots to 20 feet above the ground. Burrows captured something of this speed and scale in the South Vietnamese soldier directly below the enormous helicopter, positioning the viewer in the scene, among others who shrink from the rotor wash. In February 1971, Burrows and four other photojournalists were aboard a South Vietnamese helicopter that was brought down by antiaircraft fire along the Laos-Vietnam border—all were killed. from Touchstones of the Twentieth Century: A History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame (exhibition, 2020-21)