This was posted yesterday and only received one comment. I didn't see a copy on the list, so perhaps there was some problems with the posting. So, one more try ... my apologies if it did appear on the list and if this is a duplicate post.
============================================ Not too many people know about Dickey Chapelle. Those that do, generally don't know much about her other than she was a photojournalist and that she was killed in Vietnam. There hasn't been much written about her until recently, over the last couple-three years. And even that which has been written is often incomplete or wrong. I've always known of Dickey Chapelle, or at least it seems that way. I must have seen some of her work in Look magazine, or read some articles she wrote in Reader's Digest. I really can't recall, but years later, when someone casually mentioned her name, I was reminded of her, and decided to find out more about her life and her work. During the past couple of years I've come across a couple of Marines who knew her in Vietnam, one who was there when she was killed, and a friend of the pilot who choppered her lifeless body out of Chu Lai on that fateful day. I've become a fan of Dickey Chapelle, a women whose career was filled with firsts - the first woman PJ in Vietnam, the first woman PJ killed in Vietnam, the first woman covering the war in the pacific, the first and only woman on the front lines at Iwo Jima, the first woman to parachute into combat zones, and the first to tell the world that the US was engaged in a war in Vietnam, and that we weren't just "advisors." In 1962, Dickey photographed a U.S. Marine, in uniform, combat-ready in the door of a helicopter, surrounded by a cadre of South Vietnamese soldiers. It was the first published photograph of an American in combat in Vietnam and the photo won the 1963 Press Photographer's Association "Photograph of the Year" award. The list of Dickey Chapelle "firsts" is large, and I discover more every month. Over the years I've become a fan and a booster of Dickey Chapelle, and have been looking for new or long forgotten information about her. In 1957 she went to Algiers, the first journalist to be accredited by the partisans, and lived amongst them for a month or so, documenting their struggle against the French. I didn't know of that until recently, and just a couple of days ago Dr. Sheila Webb, the author of an article entitled "An American Journalist in the Role of Partisan Dickey Chapelles Coverage of the Algerian War," and I had a chance to talk via email, and she sent me a copy of the article she'd written. The article appeared in a rather obscure journal, American Journalism, and puts forth the argument that "The work of Chapelle prefigured the more engaged photography [style] of the 1960's" and that "The photographs and copy she produced in the Algerian Hills in 1957 offered a fresh discourse in style, approach and visuals." Webb compares Chapelle's style of working to that of Robert Capa's during the Spanish Civil War. If you're interested in photojournalism, and learning more about Dickey Chapelle, Dr. Webb's article can be found on one of my web pages. It'll be there for about a week before being taken down. http://home.earthlink.net/~scbelinkoff/dickey_chapelle/algiers.pdf (1.25mb) Shel
