The Cultural Truth of the Material Age

Author: Xia Yu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: On June 8, 1972, David Burnett and photographer Huang Gongwu, who were in Vietnam, passed through a village that had been bombed. They were accompanied by a television reporter. They saw a group of children running in panic on the road, with a crying girl running in the front, stripped of her clothes. David and Huang Gongwu almost simultaneously aimed their cameras at the running children and pressed the shutter. The film in David's camera had already reached the last frame, and he quickly changed to a new roll of film. By the time he raised the camera again, the crying girl had run behind them. David captured the back of the girl running away. On the afternoon of February 17, 2004, I interviewed Robert Pringle, the president of Contact Press Images, in a café near Huixin Street in Beijing, with the help of a translator.