Reflections of Vietnam
OACC exhibits Vietnamese American photographers Thinh Le and Danny Nguyen
By Cathy Lee

Prepare to be captivated by Alex Nguyen’s photos of Vietnamese people and landscape as well as Thinh Le’s unusual 360-degree panoramic photos of Chau Doc’s marketplaces, on exhibit in Reflections: Vietnam Through the Eyes of Vietnamese Americans at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.

Le, 35, said his interest in depicting his hometown of Chau Doc was “to capture different scenes that catch the eyes and give people a glimpse of what the town looks like in recent years. But not much has changed in the small city.”

Le took the 12 black-and-white pictures on exhibit in October 1998. He decided to take an unique approach to taking these panoramic shots, which are 41 inches in length. “With the 360-degree panoramic view, I sought sensibility of what a place looks like and to see pictures of people in Vietnam,” he said. “Some people concentrate on the exoticness of the country. I personally wanted to take shots from an ordinary view of daily life of people and the marketplace.”

Le was born in Saigon but grew up in Chau Doc, a small town with a population of 75,000 on the southwest border of Vietnam, where the Mekong River enters the country. His family immigrated to the United States in 1981 and settled in Northern Virginia. He attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and graduated with a degree in computer science. He worked in North Virginia before moving to Santa Clara, Calif., with his wife, Kim, 35, and his daughter, My-Lan, 3. Le plans to go back to Vietnam and take color panoramic shots of the country.

Ngyuen said going back to Vietnam was a homecoming for him. Some of his color photographs are of landscapes, but he concentrates on the Vietnamese people.

“I established connections with my subjects from what they shared with me,” he said.

For example, when he was taking a picture of a former South Vietnamese soldier, the soldier told him that “he was incredibly disillusioned by the political sides during the war. He didn’t know what he was sent out on missions for and who was he supposed to shoot at. He didn’t trust anyone.”

While speaking to the former soldier, Nguyen was impressed by how the man was able to put everything behind him. “He was living a daily life and he cared about the future of his children,” Nguyen said. “He did it for his children and he said he didn’t care about the political climate in Vietnam ... He was very content and he focused on making sure his children got an education.”

In another piece, Nguyen photographed a baby with a grossly enlarged head. Ngyuen said he toured an orphanage in Hanoi, where he saw this baby. “The boy was over a year old and his head was half his body mass with no motor skills,” Nguyen said. “I picked him up and it was difficult to be in that particular ward.”

The boy Ngyuen held at the orphanage died a month later.

Ngyuen said going back to Vietnam was a personal journey. “It is important to share the stories and images of the people and hear different voices from Vietnam, from what the media portrays as Vietnam is entering a market-economy state,” he said. “People’s daily life today wasn’t coming out and that’s why I choose to exhibit the photos.”

Ngyuen said after his trip to Vietnam in August 1995, he came back with 800 slides, which he narrowed down to 20 for the OACC exhibit.

Ngyuen immigrated to the United States in 1975 and lived in Virginia. He attended the University of Massachusetts and majored in history. Currently, he lives in Oakland and works as chief of staff for City Councilman John Russo.

Reflections: Vietnam Through the Eyes of Vietnamese Americans will be on view through Oct. 30 at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St., Suite 290. For more information, call 510-208-6088.