"April 1975, Phnom Penh — Saigon" opens in Sarajevo

"April 1975, Phnom Penh — Saigon" opens in sarajevo

"April 1975, Phnom Penh — Saigon" opens at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, part of this year's Memory Module Program. © Melanie Sapina for The VII Foundation.

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On April 8, 2025, we celebrated the opening of April 1975, Phnom Penh — Saigon, at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo as part of this year’s Memory Module Program.

On view until May 17, 2025, April 1975, Phnom Penh — Saigon highlights the extraordinary work of journalists who covered the end of the wars in Cambodia and Vietnam in April 1975. These conflicts in Indochina were not only defining moments in history but also produced journalism that has become a mythic benchmark against which everything that followed is judged.

Curated by Gary Knight, Executive Director of The VII Foundation, and reporter and author Jon Swain, the exhibition features photographs, written accounts, and ephemera belonging to the reporters who documented the victory of communist forces.

“Inevitably, the job of war reporting entails the sacrifice of journalists’ lives. So it was in Cambodia and Vietnam,” says Jon Swain. “I see this exhibition as a way of honouring all those journalists who were killed in the war, hailing from across the world, young, old, men and women whose names are inscribed on the wall at the entrance of the exhibition.”

Curator Q&A

To mark the opening, we welcomed students from the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo for a discussion with the curators, Gary Knight and Jon Swain, who was one of the few foreign correspondents present in Saigon and Phnom Penh during their fall in 1975. The conversation explored journalism’s role in documenting history and the ethical responsibility of witnessing conflict.

We are grateful for the thoughtful exchange and the inspiring presence of these future sociologists, political scientists, and journalists.