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According to Journalist - Photographer Truong Hoang Them , former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Dat Mui Photo Newspaper, former Chairman of the Literature and Arts Association of Ca Mau Province: “The nature of journalism at that time, as long as you had talent, you could “jump in and do it”, thanks to your love for the job, you could overcome everything, many brothers matured from the beginning. The content, marketing... at that time were directly done by Kien Hung, there was no board. Le Nguyen had to measure the size of each space planned for the photos on the market, then go to the darkroom to enlarge the photos, Xuan Dung was in charge of printing. At that time, there was no money to print the newspaper, where could we get royalties, there was only allowance, not salary. In the most difficult times, reporters volunteered to work, just to have news and photos published in the newspaper, but they did not receive royalties”.

Photo story

Specializing in photography and photo enlargement, according to Journalist - Artist Le Nguyen, Vice President of the Vietnam Association of Photographers, former Editor-in-Chief of Dat Mui Photo Newspaper, at that time, the means of operation were rudimentary, the newspaper published one issue each year on the occasion of Tet, printed in black and white, only the first and fourth covers were printed in color, the photos of these two covers were also black and white and then colored. Every month, the newspaper published a poster, mainly two-color photo news printed in 79 x 109 cm, the quantity was from 500-1,000 copies depending on the event, distributed to the district departments and branches. With such work, the photography department was also small, only 5-7 people.

Some publications of Dat Mui Photo Newspaper from the difficult early days.

Since 1983, the newspaper was published every three months, at which time it recruited more reporters, technicians, administrative staff and some who had just returned from school. The brothers graduated from high school with a talent for writing, but had not received any professional training, most of them only attended the information and photography class recruited by the Department of Culture and Information. While studying and working, the brothers guided each other. Usually, on business trips, there had to be 2 reporters, a writer and a photographer; there were not many cameras to equip everyone, sometimes 2 or 3 people shared 1 camera. The film quota was 36 shots, 10 photos had to be selected, enough for newspapers, posters and documents. A trip was given no more than 2 rolls of film, so each time you pressed the shutter, you had to consider choosing the angle, adjusting the distance and lighting very carefully. Such working conditions helped improve the skills of many brothers such as: Truong Hoang Them, Lam Thanh Dam, Tran Viet Dung, Tran Quoc Tuan, Trinh Xuan Dung... who later became Vietnamese artists.

“The agency specialized in photography, so they made a darkroom out of khaki fabric, sewn in two layers, like a mosquito net, with only a fan inside. To develop film, you had to wake up early to lower the temperature. To enlarge photos during the day, you couldn’t wear clothes in the darkroom because it was too hot, the light bulb of the enlarger gave off heat and trapped the air, you had to crawl out every 30 minutes, your body was soaked as if it had been rained on, but the happiest thing was that the enlarged photos were beautiful, accurate in size, and accepted by the printer,” said Journalist - Artist Le Nguyen.

Newspaper printing

In the 80s and 90s, Dat Mui Photo Newspaper was enthusiastically received by the people because of its beautiful printed images. For about ten years, from 1980 to 1990, often near Tet, he had to stay in Saigon ( Ho Chi Minh City) for several months. Journalist - Artist Trinh Xuan Dung, former Editor-in-Chief of Dat Mui Photo Newspaper, mused: "The beginning of working as a newspaper was difficult, the most troublesome part was the printing. One time, on New Year's Eve, I was still waiting at the printing house, outside the firecrackers were going off, but my heart was restless and impatient, just waiting until morning, hoping that the newspaper would be printed in time so I could immediately transport it back to Ca Mau".

In difficult times, normal printing was difficult, but with early photo newspapers it was even more difficult, because there were many images so there were also many places to print them, such as posters that were too large, so not every place could print them. Besides the newspaper, there were many other jobs to earn money to "feed the newspaper": printing calendars, printing books, medical documents... The person in charge of printing had to follow closely and do it carefully.

At that time, there were printing houses in the province, but they only printed typo, lead, and black and white; old machines could also print, but the most difficult thing was buying supplies, which small printing houses could not access. During the subsidy period, printing supplies were limited, and procedures were complicated, so printing could only be done at Tran Phu Printing House (Saigon).

The newspaper was published every 3 months, then every 2 months, every 1 month, gradually shortening. Each time it went to print, it had to stay for a whole month to finish. When assigned to take care of this important task, Journalist - Artist Xuan Dung had to stay there almost the whole time. “The entire editorial office had only a dozen people, the articles were all handwritten on paper, after the Editorial Board reviewed and edited, they were typed. At that time, the agency only had one typewriter and only one person used it. The photo editing and darkroom were in charge of Le Nguyen. The photos were collected, the ideas were sketched, the initial presentation was brought to Saigon, and an artist was found to complete the presentation. At that time, it was only hand-drawn, which took time. Sometimes it was impossible to estimate, the typesetting was already done, if we wanted to remove something, we had to take it all apart and rearrange it again,” Mr. Dung said.

Having worked at the photo newspaper since 1981, Mr. Trinh Xuan Dung recalled: “At that time, I was neither a reporter nor an editor. I fixed things when I saw something that was not good, but I just devoted all my energy, sometimes staying up all night to keep up with the work progress. Everyone in the agency agreed to pay attention to every step, down to the smallest detail. For example, to have a beautiful cufflink that could be used permanently later, it had to go through 4 times of design, use and editing. At that time, even the headline had to be hand-drawn by an artist on glossy paper. Newspapers were often printed late, sometimes I had to beg the printing house to send the newspaper back first, then pay later. Luckily, I worked there for a long time and became close friends, from the security guard to the director, so the printing house was very understanding.”

Early business stories

According to Mr. Trinh Xuan Dung, the person who contributed to the "bread and butter" of Dat Mui Photo Newspaper in the beginning was Journalist - Artist Truong Hoang Them. Being attached to Dat Mui Photo Newspaper, both working and composing photos, being admitted to the Vietnam Association of Artists at the same time as Journalist Le Nguyen, before transferring to the Provincial Association of Literature and Arts , he devoted himself to the newspaper's economy, paperwork, administrative organization, and governance. According to Mr. Truong Hoang Them: "The biggest gain is the attention and support of the provincial leaders so that the newspaper can operate well. In the beginning, all current affairs and events of the whole year were focused on making the spring newspaper, not published periodically, due to the lack of funding, so the remaining time was only spent on events and propaganda requirements. The newspaper was published infrequently, so posters were published more frequently, the happiest thing was seeing people post newspapers in their homes for decoration".

At that time, photo newspapers had 3 sources of income: the province gave shrimp, exchanged shrimp for paper; took the opportunity to train photographers in foreign countries while taking photos to earn money; took advantage of the strength of photography to print calendars for sale, commonly sheet calendars (1 sheet, 7 sheets).

From a temporary license, serving the propaganda needs of each period, to a new stage, when the domestic press, especially in Ho Chi Minh City, began to develop, photojournalism needed a license, published periodically, so that readers could easily receive it. Recalling the story of spending 2 weeks in Hanoi to apply for a publishing license, Mr. Truong Hoang Them expressed his gratitude to Mr. Doan Thanh Vi (Ba Vi, Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee) and Mr. Tran Trong Tan, Head of the Central Ideology and Culture Department at that time, who created conditions, introduced him to the Publishing Department to apply for a license, with a very legitimate reason: In the remote land of Dat Mui, the people still had many difficulties, the people were low-educated, and people were busy working and producing, so photojournalism was suitable to carry out the task of propaganda and encouraging the people.

“Because it is mainly about images, photographers also concentrate in large numbers on the unit. Ca Mau is one of the provinces with many members of the Vietnam Association of Photographic Artists, thanks to the human resources from Dat Mui Photo Newspaper, a newspaper that not only serves propaganda but also contributes greatly to the development of artistic photography. Today, Dat Mui Photo Newspaper belongs to memories, but there was a time when, in hardship and deprivation, photojournalists contributed greatly to the development of journalism and the construction of the homeland and the country,” Mr. Truong Hoang Them affirmed./.

Good Heart

Source: https://baocamau.vn/buoi-dau-lam-bao-anh-a39802.html