Combat photographer, author of Point & Shoot.
In 1968, the Vietnam war reached its zenith.
Drafted the year before, Bill Clevenger found himself stationed at the war’s crossroads. Within months, the Tet Offensive had begun. Agent Orange exposure increased dramatically. Clevenger was sent as a “tunnel rat” into the Viet Cong’s underground labyrinths, into the bush as a radio telephone operator (always the first man targeted by snipers), and then finally, as a strictly unofficial combat photographer.
The violence to which he was exposed was so great that when his battalion needed a man for the job, none of the information officers at base camp were willing to take it. So Clevenger, again, was drafted. So far as can be discerned, he became the only combat photographer in one of the Vietnam War’s most violent fronts – and in 1968, its most violent year. Developing photographs in a makeshift jungle dark room tent, Clevenger managed to document the war’s devastation, and the fraternity forged among the service members who experienced it. At the end of his tour, his photographs were confiscated, but by a random oversight, the negatives were spared.
Fifty years later, they have been rediscovered and are published for the first time by Babel Editions.
