In 2005 Fletcher visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, a memorial of the conflict known to the Vietnamese as the American War. Affected by the images he saw, he rephotographed the pictures and text descriptions that documented the museum's timeline—from 1965 to 1975—of the United States military intervention in Vietnam. Taken with a handheld digital camera at oblique angles to avoid flash reflections, his bootlegged pictures capture, among other things, a massacre of women and children (famously documented for Life magazine by US Army photographer Ron Haeberle), showing the victims before and after they were shot; a prisoner (identified by an arrow) being pushed alive from a US Army helicopter; a plane deploying the highly toxic herbicide Agent Orange; and a young person with skin wounds. The selection of pictures brings into focus photography’s pivotal role in the construction of history.

Gallery label from

The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook, April 16, 2012–April 29, 2013.

Medium Inkjet prints
Dimensions (a): 23 15/16 × 18" (60.8 × 45.7 cm) (b): 10 1/2 × 14" (26.7 × 35.5 cm)
Credit Gift of Christine Burgin and William Wegman
Object number 372.2008.9.a-b
Associated work The American War
Department Photography

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