John Garofolo
Barnes & Noble-West Towne 7433 Mineral Point Rd., Madison, Wisconsin 53717
press release: Fifty years ago, on Nov. 4, 1965, war photographer Dickey Chapelle became the first female American war correspondent to be killed in action when she died on a U.S. Marine patrol in Vietnam. A new book from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, Dickey Chapelle Under Fire, chronicles her trailblazing life and work, showcasing some of the most powerful images from her 25-year career. Drawn from the vast collection of her materials housed at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Dickey Chapelle Under Fire is the first extensive collection of Chapelle's work to be published.
Author John Garofolo shares Chapelle's remarkable story -- from World War II through the Cuban Revolution and to the early days of the Vietnam War -- offering readers the chance to experience Dickey's wide-ranging images, including several taken during her final patrol. The book describes Chapelle's fight to be taken seriously in the male-dominated field of war photography and describes times she risked her life to tell the story, as she did with military units on front lines and as a prisoner in Hungary.
Dickey Chapelle Under Fire expands the legacy of a pioneering photojournalist who helped to break gender barriers for future generations of female journalists and whose photographs once graced the pages of National Geographic, The National Observer, Life, and others. Garofolo's book also showcases the tenacity, courage and compassion of her work and highlights the human impact of wars, telling the bigger story beyond the battlefield.
In the foreword former war correspondent Jackie Spinner, who once served as the Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, explains that Garofolo "presents a photographic narrative of one incredibly gifted journalist who captured the humanity and inhumanity of battle, the sorrows and the joys. We see the conflicts as she did, and I am struck by how similar they feel to the battles I saw.