AP images of Vietnam War go on public display in Hanoi

“AP presented these images of what was really going on in the war,” company President and CEO Gary Pruitt said at the Thursday reception, attended by government officials, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius, other Hanoi-based diplomats and local media representatives. “It was through that lens that people around the world gained a better understanding of the conflict.”

The photos “gave the whole world a full picture of what was going on in Vietnam,” President Truong Tan Sang told AP. “I believe these photos made an enormous contribution to bringing the war in Vietnam to an end.”

They include Malcolm Browne’s image of a Buddhist monk set aflame in protest, Nick Ut’s picture of a young girl running naked and in pain after being scorched by napalm and Eddie Adams stark frame showing a South Vietnamese general executing a suspected Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head.

“Vietnam: The Real War,” a total of 58 black-and-white photos, opened to the public on Friday, also drawing a large number of Vietnamese media. The selection is drawn from a book of the same name, AP’s photo history of the war, published in 2013.

“Vietnam: The Real War.”

The exhibit will run through June 26 at Hanoi’s Exhibition Hall, after previous displays in New York and London.