Saigon Weather

BUI DINH TUY
Binging the shutters down on history

Actions speak louder than words. All it took for Bui Dinh Tuy to prove this adage right was the soft touch of his finger to release the shutter of his camera. His pictures told the whole story, again and again, as the Vietnamese people waged their heroic and just struggle against France and the United States.

Tuy was one of the best photojournalists in Viet Nam then. The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) regards him as one of the founders of photo-journalism and the one who introduced color photography to the nation's premier information service.

The agency credits him with having layed the foundation for its photography course that has reached a high level today. From

1944 to 1967, he trained budding photojournalists in the art.

Bui Dinh Tuy, also known as Dinh Thuy, was born in 1914 into a peasant family in Canh Duong Commune in Quang Binh Province's Quang Trach District.

Born with a love and talent for visual art, Tuy went to Ha Noi on his own when he was 21 and studied photography and painting at the Polytechnic College.

He was expelled just a year later after he joined a students' strike to support the Indochinese Front for Democracy. Then he went south and found a job as a painter for the Indochine Cinema in Sai Gon.

Not much later, he was caught and imprisoned by the French authorities for his patriot activities. He escaped and joined the Viet Minh force in the Sai Gon-Cho Lon zone.

After the successful August Revolution of 1945, Tuy was given charge of the photography office of the Southern Region Information Service. He was also the photographer of the Cam Tu (Suicide Squad) newspaper in the Sai Gon-Cho Lon zone.

He joined the Communist Party in 1949 and in 1952, moved on to work as a photojournalist for the Political Office of the Sai Gon-Cho-Lon zone.

In late 1954, Tuy led a team of photojournalists from the southern region to the North. In 1956, he was made the deputy director of the Ministry of Culture's Photography Department. This later merged with the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and become its Photography Branch.

Tuy had the honor-to accompany President Ho Chi Minh on his first trip to visit India in 1958.

To meet an urgent need of the VNA to upgrade itself, Tuy led a group of technical staff to Germany to learn color photography. In 1961, he established the first color photo studio in Ha Noi. He was also the first photographer in VNA to take and develop color photographs.

In 1965, as the American war escalated, the 50 year-old man with a gentle and optimistic smile marched south again with a heavy rucksack on his back across the Truong Son Mountain Range to Tay Ninh Province bordering Cambodia.

He had the important task to capture the peak moments of the war and to develop a photojournalist force for the Liberation News Agency. It was an extremely difficult task given the circumstances and the lack of equipment, not to mention funding. But Tuy was undaunted, and set up impromptu dark rooms to bring to the world, particularly his own fellow-citizens, the heroism and tragedy of war.

On September 21, 1967, hit by steel-pellet bombs dropped by the Americans, Bui Dinh Tuy died in Binh Long District in the southern Binh Phuoc Province. He was one of 250 VNA employees who made the supreme sacrifice for their country.

His son, Bui Dinh Toai, treasures more than 100 pictures that his father took - the fierce fight waged by the workers, the Sai Gon-Cho Lon movements in March 1950, the ambush in Ly Van Hanh Street in Chinatown, taking possession of a downed plane, and the uprising staged by rubber plantation workers in Bien Hoa, Thu Dau Moi, Phu Rieng and Long Thanh in the South.

For his heroism and valuable contributions to the national causes of independence and reunification, Tuy was awarded the Resistance War Order, third level, and the Fatherland's Iron Bulwark Medal.

His colleagues and peers remember Tuy for his professional skills and his determination to be in the midst of the most fierce action during the French and American war.

A new life

For residents of a street in HCM City that runs parallel to Bach Dang Street from Dinh Bo Linh to Phan Van Tri streets in Binh Thanh District, the name Bui Dinh Tuy signifies a new life.

A mechanic who has spent his entire 67 years there, says that the appearance of the street has changed beyond recognition since the Government widened, paved and changed its name in 1985 from Tran Quang Vinh to Bui Dinh Tuy.

Previously it was a field where morning glory was cultivated, an area that resounded with croaking of frogs in the evening. Until 1975, it was a place that few people dared to visit after dark.

The mechanic says the path running across the vegetable fields and some graves was called Cuong De from 1955 to 1975. The road was first widened a little after 1975 and made accessible to three-wheelers with a new name - Tran Quang Vinh. A primary school in the middle of the street still bears this name.

It was as late as in 1997, when the 3-km long street underwent another upgrade, that houses began being built beside the pavement. Many of its original residents sold their land to better-off buyers from other areas. The initial stretch of the street, running from Dinh Bo Linh Street to Bui Dinh Tuy Bridge across the canal these days, used to be called the street of leaning houses because their foundations were dug in the old morning glory fields that were always water-logged.

The remaining portion resembles a main road in a rural township. A few bicycles and motorbikes are all that one is likely to come across at any given time of the day.

People sit in small cafes along the street drinking coffee or chatting. Even the noises made by a few motorbike garages don't disturb the peace. Women from the quiet village-like asphalt lanes off the street push trolleys on to the pavement, setting up food stalls where locals buy vegetables, pork, beef or chicken meat.

These days, the streets residents are basking in the glory of increased land prices, shifting to trading and other businesses. Soon the occupation of street vendor servicing nearby living quarters will be a thing of the past. - VNS