Vietnam - UK

First woman to receive the Robert Capa Gold Medal, which rewards a reporter for courage and independence, Catherine Leroy was one of the few women photographers to cover the war in Vietnam between 1966 and 1968.

She was just twenty-one when she flew to Saigon on a one-way ticket, with only a Leica camera and a hundred dollars in her luggage. The young woman quickly made friends with the American soldiers and shared their daily lives–;they belonged to the same generation. For three years, she covered the conflict as close to the action as possible. She followed the patrols on their missions, sharing their rations and improvised beds.

Her tight framing and close proximity to the Marines capture faces and bodies caught in the turmoil of gunfire. In the heat and mud of the Vietnamese jungle, Catherine Leroy captures moments of courage, fear and tension, but also the friendship, solidarity and distress of young men struck down by the violence of the terrain. Her lens takes the lightning speed of the fighting, the despair of the Vietnamese people, the devastation on both sides of the conflict. Taken prisoner in Hué by North Vietnamese soldiers during the Tet offensive, she produced an exceptional report and was featured on the cover of Life. Her photographs travelled the world. Only civilian woman to parachute with the American army, Leroy paved the way for her fellow war reporters.

Her images, published in prestigious international magazines, bear witness to the acuity of a singular photographic eye: that of one of the very first women to be engaged in close combat in a predominantly male professional world. Her boldness, curiosity and sharp eye give her photographs extraordinary visual power. This book, which includes Leroy's correspondence with her parents, from 1966 to 1968, reveals the emergence of a young photojournalist and tells the story of a this woman's initiatory journey: a life of political, social and feminist commitment.