Defining moments of an era

Catherine Leroy came up with the idea for “Under Fire” (www.pieceuniquegallery.com) in January of this year, she says. She believes the images she has assembled are defining moments of the 20th century, and new technology allows her to reprint and sell them at relatively modest prices.

Although a vintage Vietnam print by Tim Page might sell for $1,400 at auction in Paris, Page says, Leroy is offering the same image through her online gallery for between $160 and $460, depending on the size and whether it’s framed. Pricing is the same for all of the works on the site, and all are archival Pictopia prints, which ensures longevity and fine quality.

For the photographers -- Leroy, Page, David Burnett, Larry Burrows, Gilles Caron, Robert Ellison, Dirck Halstead, Henri Huet, Don McCullin, Dana Stone and Dick Swanson -- it’s a new way to get the work out there, and for the surviving ones, a way to earn income.

“It’s a way to put more steam on the table,” Page says.

Marc Leepson, arts editor and a columnist for the VVA Veteran, a bimonthly magazine from the Vietnam Veterans of America, says it will publish one image from the site per issue for the next several months, accompanied by texts by the great writers of the era. The first paired a photograph by McCullin with an essay by Philip Caputo. In the November-December issue, Jack Smith writes about an Henri Huet photograph.

Leroy proposed the project to the magazine, recommended by Vietnam reporter Gloria Emerson. “We had not heard of Catherine Leroy,” Leepson says, “even though we have a fair knowledge of the field of Vietnam photographers.” Leepson, a Vietnam veteran who receives about 20 books a month on the war for review, says he was happy to discover work he hadn’t known before. The Web site, he says, is “extremely well done. She has chosen very high-quality photographs. They’re fantastic images.”

-- Susan Freudenheim