Vietnamese Photographer Captured Lives of Communist Guerrilla Fighters Hiding in the Jungle

Jun 12, 2025

Matt Growcoot

Five women in matching dark clothing practice a synchronized dance or exercise outdoors, each balancing on one leg with arms extended, against a backdrop of trees and open sky. — A song and dance class in the Southwestern region. The students had to simultaneously study and fight the enemy during the war, 1970-71 © Võ An Khánh Courtesy of Dogma Collection

A new exhibition is shining a light on the work of Võ An Khánh, a photographer who was embedded with the North Vietnamese Communist Army during the Vietnam War.

A different perspective on what is often referred to as the first “televised war” that produced iconic photographs, Khánh documented the lives of communist guerrilla fighters and their communities hiding from the Americans and the South Vietnamese in the country’s mangrove forests, mainly in the Ca Mau region.

The Mangrove Theatre at the IC Visual Lab in Bristol, England, is holding the first European monograph of Khánh’s work. The photographer died at age 87 in 2023.

Khánh staged a photo exhibition in the challenging conditions of a mangrove forest during the Vietnam War. He developed his photos in the field and stored them in ammunition boxes with rice to absorb moisture.

“Every frame of the 16 images in the exhibition captures an impossible moment,” the Mangrove Theatre writes in a press release. “Children attend lessons in jungle classrooms designed to be quickly disassembled to maintain cover. Women in ascetic uniforms perform balletic leaps across flooded fields. Medics operate knee-deep in swamp water — a scene of wartime surrealism that Hollywood studios spend fortunes attempting to recreate.”

A group of people wearing hooded masks and dark clothing walk in a line across a narrow wooden bridge in a forested area, each carrying bags or containers. The scene is in black and white. — Women attend a political science class. They wear headdresses to protect their identities because they are spies placed strategically in the South by the Viet Cong. © Võ An Khánh Courtesy of Dogma Collection

A group of children sits outdoors on benches, holding up small chalkboards with writing. Trees and sunlight fill the background, and the children appear to be attentively participating in a lesson. — Students in Kinh Hang Village, Tran Van Thoi District, Ca Mau province, in a mobile classroom, April 1970 © Võ An Khánh Courtesy of Dogma Collection

Four children sit outdoors on rough ground, watching as one child uses a large, Y-shaped slingshot made of wooden poles, aiming at something off-frame under a bright sky. — Firing grenades at enemy posts using scaffolds and elastic bands – a unique invention of the people in the war © Võ An Khánh Courtesy of Dogma Collection

Silhouette of a person standing on large rocks, holding a rifle and wearing a flowing cape, set against a bright, cloudy sky. — A soldier at Hon Da Bac, Tran Van Thoi, Ca Mau 1972 © Võ An Khánh Courtesy of Dogma Collection

The story of the Vietnam War is almost always told through Western eyes which, the Mangrove Theatre says, reduces Vietnam to a “narrow stereotype” of silent farmers and fighters to be either “feared or pitied.”

The exhibition will also display photographs taken by well-known wartime photojournalists such as Don McCullin, Tim Page, and Nick Ut to “demonstrate the stark difference in visual language between outside observers and those who lived the reality.”

Surgeons in masks and gowns operate on a patient, focusing intently while using surgical tools. Several assistants look on, and the scene appears to be in a hospital operating room. — The Military Medics of the Southwestern Region during a field operation in the U Minh forest in September 1970 © Võ An Khánh Courtesy of Dogma Collection

A black-and-white photo shows a group of children sitting outdoors facing a chalkboard propped against a small rustic shelter, while an adult stands in front holding a young child. Trees and branches surround the scene. — Mobile classrooms next to the bunker, within range of Chu Y station, Khanh Hung hamlet. The teacher is Ms. Bay Tan from Hao Sai Hamlet © Võ An Khánh Courtesy of Dogma Collection

Nick Ut has been in the news recently as authorship of his most famous work, and arguably the most famous photo from the Vietnam War, Napalm Girl has been called into question.

A new documentary called The Stringer claims that Ut did not take the image of Kim Phuc running from a napalm strike and it was instead an unknown freelancer. The film prompted World Press Photo to suspend Ut’s credit on the image, officially known as The Terror of War.

For more information on the exhibition, head to the website.