"A Pointed Question"
Associated Press
United States, established 1846
January 17, 1967
A gelatin silver press photograph that captures a tense field interrogation during the Vietnam War—an armed soldier holding a knife toward a young woman—made to compel viewers to confront the human reality of conflict.
The blank, pale sky strips away context so the woman's anxious, upturned face and the soldier's poised blade read like a stark, cinematic tableau of vulnerability and threat.
As a work of 1960s photojournalism, it exemplifies how documentary images brought distant wars into immediate public view, shaping opinion and expanding the power and ethics of visual reporting.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
6 3/8 × 8 1/2" (16.2 × 21.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The New York Times Collection
Accession
1946.2001
Palette
Exhibitions
