DRISKEL VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHY
September 25 - October 15, 2003
Opening Reception: Friday, September 25, 7 - 10 p. m.
CHARLES EKBERG
The Driskel Gallery at the Schoolhouse Center for Art & Design in Provincetown, Massachusetts, is proud to present an exhibition of important Vietnam war photographs by Charles Ekberg. The core of this collection is images of the battle for the city of Hue and surrounding areas during the massive Tet offensive of 1968. Fields of dark, raw earth and splintered trees are shown shredded by artillery shells and bombing runs. Low-crawling infantrymen and soldiers crouch warily behind ruined walls and are seen scattered throughout these bleak views. One particular group of shots yields the record of a fateful patrol moving down Highway One, near Thon Que Chu, on the road to Hue. The photographer, atop a tank, framed the first picture between the barrels of 40mm guns, an orderly scene of foot soldiers moving quietly forward. As the patrol moved into the sudden deadly ambush, the photographer dived from the tank, recording a desperate scramble to the safety of a nearby rice paddy. The men spent the day huddled in the muddy paddy to avoid devastating fire. Ekberg recalls the death of perhaps as many as twelve men. The end of the day yielded what may be one of the most haunting images to survive that war-- an exhausted muddy soldier, sprawled against a wall, mud-caked fingers spread wide apart, staring vacantly ahead.
Vietnam was the first war substantially photographed in color. Alongside Ekberg’s somber black and white images of battle are color images, the spectacular nighttime lights of war. Flares and explosions illuminate human silhouettes, and delicate tracers trail across the night sky. These fine lines of red light in beautiful waves drawn across a black void were, in fact, the paths of tracer rounds from airborne Gatling guns, machine guns fired from an airship that was euphemistically dubbed Puff the Magic Dragon. In another color photograph a group of soldiers inside a Caribou aircraft being ferried from one hostile area to the next sit in darkness, as silent and unconnected as riders on a subway train. All the images in this exhibition are printed full-frame, uncropped, revealing Ekberg’s innate talent for composition. As in all great combat photography, Ekberg manages to mix cataclysm and extremes of human emotion with beauty.
Charles Ekberg was born in 1944 in Buffalo, South Dakota. He grew up tending livestock on a large cattle and sheep ranch, spending much of his childhood on horseback. He attended Montana State University and the University of Colorado, receiving a B. S. in history. It was at the University of Colorado that Ekberg began to regularly take classes in art and found himself particularly drawn to printmaking. In 1966 he was drafted and sent to Vietnam where he was assigned to the First Air Cavalry Division as a battalion clerk and photographer for the 5/7 Air Cavalry. Armed with the influence generally afforded clerks in the Army, and with an independent spirit, Ekberg employed this confluence of opportunity and determination to travel widely in Vietnam and persue his goal of becoming a combat photographer. Carrying both color and black and white film he marched with combat infantrymen , recorded their experiences, and in doing so, secured an important realistic historical and artistic record of events that are steadily being morphosed and mythologized by television and films. Ekberg is also remembered as one who used his position to help his comrades as much as possible. With the blessings of his superiors to identify infantrymen with special talents, he facilitated life-saving reassignments for men with unique abilities or handicaps to other positions , out of harm’s way, whether to the motor pool or the news bureau.
This exhibition is Ekberg’s first solo show and the first time his Vietnam images have been exhibited. They are already now being collected by institutions and individuals. Charles Ekberg lives and works in Boulder, Colorado.
The Schoolhouse Center for Art and Design
494 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA 02657
(508) 487-4800
lcollins@schoolhousecenter.com
Contact: Larry Collins
