Exhibition April 1975  Phnom Penh – Saigon 

Opening on April 8th at 6 pm the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the Memory Module Program 2025, April 1975, Phnom Penh – Saigon is an exhibition that examines the lives and work of the journalists who covered the end of the wars in Cambodia and Vietnam in April 1975. After more than a decade of conflict, the Second Indochina War ended rapidly and caught many by surprise, even the victorious Khmer Rouge and North Vietnamese Army. Few could divine the undercurrents of war better than the journalists reporting from the frontlines for years. Yet, when the decades-long war came to an end, it happened so fast that life-changing decisions about whether to stay or evacuate had to be made in a matter of hours. While some scrambled to board the last helicopter out, others raced to airports in neighboring countries to board the last plane in. Some were able to rescue loved ones as they fled; some had to leave everything and everyone behind. Others, including 31 Cambodian journalists killed by the Khmer Rouge, died bearing witness to the most remarkable story of the age.  

Curated by The VII Foundation’s Executive Director Gary Knight and reporter and author Jon Swain, the exhibition features photographs, written accounts, and ephemera belonging to the reporters who covered the victory of communist forces. Producer Ziyah Gafic includes images printed on fabric banners, newspaper clippings, and objects such as Françoise Demulder’s camera and Jon Swain’s defaced passport to create an immersive experience of those tumultuous final days of the wars. 

Over one hundred photographs taken by dozens of photographers are included. Images widely published in western media — like Hugh van Es’ U.S. helicopter evacuation from the top of a building in Saigon, and Thai Khac Chuong’s American official punching a man trying to board an aircraft out of the city — contrast with the 16-page spread that Japanese magazine Asahi Graph published of their reporter Naoki Mabuchi’s work, “20 Days in Phnom Penh”, and copies of archival pages of the Vietnam News Agency.  

“Inevitably, the job of war reporting entails the sacrifice of journalists’ lives. So it was in Cambodia and Vietnam,” says Jon Swain. “I see this exhibition as a way of honouring all those journalists who were killed in the war, hailing from across the world, young, old, men and women whose names are inscribed on the wall at the entrance of the exhibition.

“From my perspective this is a story about how journalism is made by a legendary — almost mythical — generation of journalists who were working in the heyday of the press,” says Gary Knight. “At few times in history has the press had such a powerful impact on policy, or such a strong relationship with the public than they did by the time the wars in Cambodia and Vietnam came to an end. This generation of journalists established the benchmark for those that followed. In this exhibition, we seek to humanize the people who reported from the field; we champion their strengths and reveal their humanity and their fragility. In so doing, we also seek to celebrate with parity the Vietnamese and Cambodian journalists who were often overlooked, many of whom lost their lives.”