Photography in Vietnam disseminate images of war to an international audience. The division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel after the 1954 Geneva Conference not only reflected the conflicting ideologies within Vietnamese Republicanism, but also the differences in the institutional structures of news agencies. The North Vietnamese government established the Vietnamese News Agency (VNA) in 1945, shortly after Ho Chi Minh’s proclamation of independence in Hanoi, as well as the Liberation News Agency (LNA) in the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail. VNA and LNA photographers were both soldiers and war correspondents, trained in military and photography techniques and answerable to the
Quagmire theory the world. In the same year, the First Indochina war commences. This war between the Vietminh and the French, concluded with the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, a decisive victory by the Vietminh. From the First Indochina War, two states emerged, the Communist ruled north and the south, split by the 17th parallel-agreed upon at the Geneva Convention in 1954. Soon after, in 1955, war breaks out between the north and south. The domino theory was a well-accepted theory during this time period, introduced by Dwight D. Eisenhower, states that if one country falls to communism, then the rest of