Project Photos: black and white

Over the 10 months spent in Vietnam, chi P. and I spent much of our time collecting old photos and letters. She began a huge project that involved purchasing and posting family album photos of families who have immigrated from Vietnam or who have died back in the 1800s. One entire wall of her apartment was covered with black and white photos of bizarre family photos. (There were quite a few of bodybuilders!)

Unlike P., I was much more interested in seeing photos and images of women -- in all aspects of their lives. It's a bit voyeuristic, but it's not unlike watching a movie. Granted, it was rather ghostly of me to have purchased someone else's family portraits but it was rather interesting to see what kinds of photos appeared in the market places. Most of them were photos left over after the family left for Europe back in the early 1900s. Sometimes, we would come across photos of the same family over and over, as if someone had entered their abandoned homes and had sold the stolen photos which I now purchased for my own personal project. Stealing photos. And of course, one of the men that sold the photos to me, he said that Americans are the most interested in collecting other people's histories. Who else would bother to invade and investigate into other people's private lives. Then again, those who stole the photos are quite familiar with their markets and know there would be a profit in these old black and whites.

Anyway, I now have a collection of women's photos -- studio portraits, school photos, vacation photos, photos that were gifted to someone else but which ended up in the pile I was sorting through. There was one with an exceptional flourish in the name.(It made me think of those younger days when my childhood friends and I freely exchanged photos with one another, willingly giving over printed impressions of ourselves inscribed with childish handwriting. Where would they end up? Would they be tossed into someone's trash and then end up in some stranger's photo collection?)

Then I thought about what I was doing. Why am I interested in this stuff? What could these Vietnamese women -- most of them rich and educated and stylish -- have anything to do with me? What part of their lives intersect with mine? Why am I fascinated with the faces and lives of these strangers? What right do I have, buying their photos and then storing them away, and now writing about them, talking about them? Where do I draw the line between creative inspiration and poetry and invading someone's privacy? And how are these women different from or similar to the Vietnamese women I know now, the ones living in VN and abroad? Decades separate the lives of these photographed women from the ones I see being lived daily. How could it possibly matter to me.

But it does. Seeing these photos -- it makes a difference. In some strange, un-named way I can understand a part of these women and can see a part of what they leave behind when they left these photos. Because that's what they are, they are visual impressions. Either they do not care that these photos are left behind -- photo albums are not so significant, I suppose, when you feel your country being torn apart, your family being separated. They might not have thought much about the fact that they leave small parts of themselves behind inside these photos. Or, it could be that it doesn't matter because these photos could never possibly capture the essence of their spirit.

But what if the photos were stolen? What if these were unknowingly ripped from their possessions? What if these were the only symbols of a past they no longer remember? (And if so, does it matter to them?) Would they want them back? Would they feel emptied? Would they feel bereft? Would they feel liberated, emancipated, from the burden of history and memory?

Whatever the photos reveal, they do not offer answers to any of these questions.

(Photo inscription on the back, written by Nga, the one half-standing on the left: Washing cups after finished eating. So happy. Who knows when days like these will be found again, my friends? Based on another photo in which Nga appears with her classmates, this photo was taken c. Spring 1956.)