Herve – thank you for the continued exchange; I think one thing I was truly interested in this work was NOT indicating too much (or at all). I dont need to say ‘these are Vietnamese people’. It is plenty for me to say ‘these are people’. A lot of non-Vietnamese photographers I see working here focus on the adjective and not the noun and I think the work is weaker for it. Your final sentence does it all for me. Thank you again. And I enjoyed looking through your website as well – my flickr pages are a mess (I use it as a sort-of first edit) and I need to do something a bit more focused. All best. Jamie

Hey,Nothing is troubling me, we are just talking, exchanging impressions. To construct your essay as you did is perfectly valid, I just said I saw more style than substance. BUT:

Photos are a funny thing. They sometimes have plenty of truth in them that reveal itself after a while, sometimes many years. It is quite possible that I will prove myself wrong, looking at them in 5, or 10 motnhs/years, and see much meaningfulness in them that escapes me now.

I opened your FlickR page with pleasure. Vietnam, not vietnam, context, not context, little matters as long as you succeed in having us wondering, question our perceptions, while enjoying good photography.

thank you so much for your reply. It is ALWAYS these kinds of details that make the experience of work so so important, the sharing and the discussing of work so critical. I remember a time when there was a discussion at Burn of whether or not to even have comments (since most magazine’s neither allow nor encourage discussion/argument/back-and-forth), and many of us vociferously argued that what differentiates BURN from so many other magazines (online and off) is that: the CONVERSATION! :))…these remarkable and small details that a photographer can share with his audience about work is not only important for the reader/author but also for the subjects…it helps us humanize and remove the natural objectification that the work we do creates….your description of this young woman is a perfect example…which is why when i published Bones of Time here, i tried to provide as much personal information and background stuff during the ensuing discussion….thank you so much for that Jamie! :))

Her face is filled with heartbreak…when i first clicked on burn on thursday night, i was arrested…part of it is that deeply forlorn and thoughtful expression and the averted eyes and the child’s toes…and she really embodied a deep loneliness that i see in the films of the filmakers i mentioned and that’s it, as you pointed out…i’ve often spoken about this with my friend Oli pin-fat (based in BKK) and it’s sometimes the rich heartbreak…in many ways, most of my favorite asian filmmakers (Hou hsio-hsien, tsai ming-lai, wong kar-wei, Tran Anh Hung, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lou Ye, Edward Yang, Jia Zhangke, etc) deal with that mysterious space between the appearance of things and the deep chasm of sadness that underlies it……and that is what i felt here…and that, like Kar-wei’s mute boy in Fallen Angels selling pigs or icecream at night, is experssed here in the night market….a resonant truth that is for me the power….

and yes, i did see 3 seasons…that’s wonderful that you shot it…it is very beautiful film…though, of course, i’m partial to Anh Hung’s films :)))))))))…cyclo, by far my favorite too…

thanks so much…i have to run…

more later
cheers
bob

Do you think it would have been valid to add these reactions to the essay, in some manner?

The faces of youth here – regardless of whether I have photographed them or not – are arresting. And they are everywhere. It is a demographically stunningly young country and when you see the legions of young people here, full of hope, vigor and ignorance, you cant help feel a certain sadness for the realization of the enormous disappointments to come. The woman who appears in the first photograph is, perhaps, emblematic of that. I made this portrait in my very first night working on this project. She found me and asked me to make her picture. I let her choose where and that image resulted – it was then I knew there was something to the idea I was trying. Some week or so later when I was back with prints for people, someone else was going through the stack of images looking at what I had brought and saw hers. Several people in the gathered group remarked that she was an addict. And in fact when I finally found her again to give her the print, she looked terrible. I asked if she would like to make another portrait with me and she said she was too tired. We’ve never seen each other since. An alternate image of her here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamagram/3610339760/in/set-72157619394572537/

Thank you Bob for your deep and attentive looking and reply. I am honored to receive it and to be here on burn. Jamie

“Outside, the sun shone, but here, I could feel the chill of exile under my skin, in my bones.”-Duong Thu Huong

Jaimie, first of all, i have say it was great to see your portraits and project here. i apologize for now having had the opportunity to write earlier….it’s been an intense 2 weeks…i watched the slideshow twice last night before going to bed and again this morning….

It is a deeply beautiful and heart-felt project. As with you, vietnam has a deep and long,personal history in my own life and I was thankful to see (even if from a non-vietnamese)a pespective on Vietnam that at least attempts to photograph a city and the people with out falling into the trope of the residue and scar of the wars (americans should know that the American War was not the only war that the vietnamese people endured) or the idea of a stoic exoticism….but in stead, i saw that essay, really, as a pesonal ode to night, as an ode to the stories that are harbored inside the facesof people and get pasted down through the observations and ways of living…in this case, the stories of the past (including suffering and endurance, but also joy and materialism and playfulness) and the moments of living through the night….the night market, a confluence of stories and lives to begin with…

I really loved the light and i also loved how in many of the pictures, particularly #16, we are foced to look upsward, skyward, moving vertically, as opposed to horizontally…this has great metaphoric power and also experiential power, because (at least for me), we tend to look up at night…toward stars, toward illumination, to sense the world around…and that movement from the mid-range of the pic toward the top creates a mysterious awakening, particularly when, as it did for me in 16, becomes a shock when we see a 2nd visual element (or person) we had not noticed before…isn’t that what occurs during the night to begin with? ;))….

Above all, i love the stories contained in the expressions in many of these portraits, in particular the children…who as always, seem to have both the most enigmatic and the most honest…children, who look into cameras without the need to self-protect or create, somehow externalize all that we (as viewers) hope to see in a person or try to understand in a life…it is a deception, and thus the essential life of photography, and yet it connects us, and for me, in truth, that is all i care about in photography: do the pictures, does a story weave some part of another’s life/story/history into my own, am i listening….and, emotional/sentimental me, does a story speak to me about our human collective connection: that it is the stories that unite us…

like my beloved filmmaker Tran Anh Hung, without whom I can hardly think of vietnam, the faces and the shape and shift of light become connective tissues for what is essentially a celebration, of living and sorrow…for it is impossible not to understand that the older subjects have suffered immeasuably, as all 3 of the wars that vietnam found itself in left indellible scars…not a single family in vietnam was spared the loss of at least 1 family member…that is an extraordinary experience that mines each of these subjects….

and lastly, can i suggest the extraordinary books by Duong Thu Huong (a dissident vietnamese writer) and by the vietnam-born, american writer Andrew X. Pham, whose 2 books (catfish and mandala and the extraordinary The Eaves of Heaven (which should be mandatory, reading for all americans, french, australians who participated in the 3 wars which howled that nation)….both their insights are necessary for anyone who has spent time or is interested in vientam….

and the stylization of the portraits (which reminded me less of Sanders and more of the colonialst portraits of Indochine) did at first too unnerved me and then the more i looked, the more i felt that the character of each of their personalities seemed to break through from the clausterphobic nature of the ‘style’….that their bodies and faces and above all the environment in which they felt, were too strong to be boxed in by your camera and your idea…;)))….and god damn, the children and the teenager’s faces arrest my heart…and the 1st young woman: that is the face of asian cinema…and the long, poetic silences of Hou Hsio-Hsien and Tsai Ming-lai….

congratulations and thank you for sharing your beautiful project :))

congratulationss Jaime!
cheers
bob

Herve – with respect, I can appreciate how the ‘exercise in style’ as you put it might put you off. I want to ask, is it context? If these portraits were made in a studio against a neutral backdrop, would that remove the ‘style’ criticism? It was quite interesting for me to hang these images here in Vietnam and hear from Vietnamese people themselves how they felt about the work. I didn’t really try to map people as Mr. Sanders did in Germany though I really appreciate his work and perhaps in my subconscious was tipping my hat to him. But my approach was more random than his methodology. And I think a discussion in that context isn’t inappropriate. Also, I think Jenny was simply trying to point out that here the war, so as to distinguish it from the period when the Viet Minh were fighting against the French, was referred to as the American war. It was that peace accord in 1954 that effectively split the country along the 17th parallel. Then yes, it did become a civil war. Thank you for your comments.
Frostfrog – I am delighted that the things that trouble you are what you find good.

Jamie, I can really se how exhibiting this series big and close together would make a big difference and do full justice to this work. Thanks for that info!

Well done. Congratulations.

You are a member of the class of Burn.

To Jenny, the “american war” was not american anymore than the US war of independance (which is truly what the vietnamese were fighting for) was the “british” war.