Thursday, 24 January 2008

Vietnam exhibit a fine tribute

Mesabi Daily News
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

The Ironworld Discovery Center will be home to a truly emotionally moving exhibit from this Saturday to April 20.

“Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina” will be ready for public viewing beginning Saturday. It is an exhibit that spans 25 years of war in that region, from the French Indochina War of the 1950s to the fall of Phnom Penh in Cambodia and Saigon in Vietnam in 1975.

That was a quarter-century of events that most definitely changed that region and also the United States. While hostilities between North Vietnam and the U.S. are now more than 30 years in the past and the two countries have renewed diplomatic and trade relations, the scars of that conflict still cut deep individually for many who fought there and the family and loved ones of the more than 55,000 Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice in that prolonged war.
A description of the of the exhibit captures its essence well:

“Photographs are the images of history rescued from the oblivion of mortality. As much as anything else, this is a form of homage on the part of those who made it back from Vietnam to the memory of those who did not.”

We applaud the new Ironworld board and all involved in securing the exhibit for the Iron Range and getting it set up for display. Great job, all.

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