Developing a love for Vietnam

Developing a love for Vietnam
VETERAN'S PHOTO EXHIBIT GETTING NEW HOME IN BERKELEY
By John Boudreau
Mercury News
Geoffrey Clifford at Angor Wat.
Courtesy of Geoffrey Clifford / Special to the Mercury News
Geoffrey Clifford at Angor Wat.
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In 1971, Geoffrey Clifford flew helicopter assault missions in central Vietnam. The 21-year-old Army pilot did not like his taste of war and was happy to leave after his nine-month tour ended.

But the vision of Vietnam's poetic landscape below his helicopter, the mist-shrouded Hai Van Pass and the central coastal mountain range, stayed with him.

``I loved it from Day One. I got to see some of the prettiest landscapes in the world,'' said Clifford, who is based in San Anselmo.

As a photographer in the mid-'80s, Clifford accompanied the first touring group of U.S. war veterans to return to the Southeast Asian country. Thus began a decades-long love for Vietnam, which eventually led to a five-year, 18-city Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit of 52 photographs capturing the daily rhythms of Vietnam.

The exhibit, ``Vietnam: Journey of the Heart,'' ended last fall but will soon be available for permanent viewing in the Bay Area. Clifford donated his photo collection to the South/Southeast Asia Library at the University of California-Berkeley. The exhibit is expected to be up later this year, said Virginia Jing-yi Shih, UC-Berkeley's librarian for Southeast Asian collections.

``This is a special collection that gives people a view of the beauty of the country,'' she said. ``We have too many things on the Vietnam War.''

That was the point of his work, Clifford said, to introduce America to postwar Vietnam. He wanted to reveal the poignancy of the Southeast Asian country: water buffalo bathed in an orange hue along the Red River Delta near Hanoi, the deep lines on the lean face of a man in the central Vietnam city of Hue, a woman in a conical hat riding a bicycle across a bridge over a lotus pond, the serene and mystical Ha Long Bay.

Clifford, 57, said his work is, in a small way, an effort to right the wrongs he believed he committed by participating in a war he never believed in. ``No matter how little I knew about world politics, my gut feeling was, this is wrong,'' he recalled of his combat days.

Clifford returned to Vietnam about a decade before the U.S. and Vietnam governments restored diplomatic relations. He agreed to join the other returning war veterans with the understanding that the communist government could not review his photos, which it did of the other veterans. The government, Clifford added, understood his goal was to show a different aspect of a country that for many Americans is synonymous with war.

``The Vietnam government is smart enough that they don't do anything what won't help their cause,'' he said.

He found a gracious and welcoming people who had put behind them a war that killed an estimated 3 million Vietnamese.

``They get over things. They don't hold grudges,'' Clifford said. ``It's all ancient history to them. The country is so young. The American war is so long ago.''

His first batch of Vietnam photos was published in ``Grand Reportage,'' a French publication, in 1986, and then in Life magazine.

He decided to work on a book -- ``Vietnam: The Land We Never Knew'' -- and requested permission to return to Vietnam. The government quickly granted him an open-ended visa in 1987. His guide, Nguyen Duc Quang, served for six years during the war along the Ho Chi Minh Trail with the People's Army of Vietnam. The two former enemies became lifelong friends.

In the late 1990s, his images hung in the halls of Congress, catching the eye of Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, whose wife called the Smithsonian, which then decided to support a touring exhibit.

For the most part, his photos have been well received. A few veterans, and some members of the Vietnamese community, criticized his efforts: How could he engage in something that benefits the communist government? How can a former U.S. soldier understand a country he is not from?

Others, particularly those suffering from psychological war wounds, have found healing in Clifford's images, he said.

Clifford has returned to Vietnam 22 times. Now, he prefers to leave his camera behind.

``It's like a closed book for me,'' Clifford said of photographing Vietnam, now a popular tourist destination for many Americans. ``Everybody is a photographer there. Everybody has pictures of Vietnam.''
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