Happy Hog Rot

See all the selections from the archives of the New York Times …

Bill comes up with another VietNam Association pairing, this time between Larry Burrows’ 1966 “Reaching Out” photograph …

… and French painter Theodore Gericault’s ca. 1818 painting, “The Raft of the Medusa”.

About a week ago, my old photography partner, Bill, sent along a photo of famed VietNam combat photographer, Larry Burrows.   This brought back memories of both VietNam (Bill was a helicopter mechanic during the war there, and I worked as a civilian government person in Saigon at the time) and Larry Burrows’ work.  Reminiscing, I told Bill that I always remembered a particular Larry Burrows photograph that I associated with a particular painting from five or six centuries ago.  But I couldn’t remember the painting, and it even took me a while to find the Larry Burrows image in question.  Well, almost a week later, following a lot of internet research and memory-jogging, I think I have put these together again.  First, the photo that Bill originally sent to me (and if this is a photo of Burrows, I don’t know who took it):

Then the Burrows photograph that always sticks in my mind, which documents a moment in the Khe Sanh battle, one of the bloodiest and longest-lasting of the war (11-week siege, with several thousands dying on both sides), where the US Marines, vastly outnumbered, were surrounded and cut off by the North Vietnamese Army.

Finally, the painting — The Triumph of Death c. 1562 — associated in my own memory with this photograph, created by Dutch painter Pieter Brueghl the Elder in circa 1562.

My brother Dennis directs my attention to a photo essay of Havana street art by his friend and photographer/filmmaker, Alice Arnold.

http://streamingmuseum.org/street-art-in-havana/