Mangrove Theatre: The Wartime Photography of Võ An Khánh, Exhibition view, photo: Nancy Karam, courtesy of Galerie Bao.
“I often risked my life to take pictures. Once, I crawled within five meters of a revolutionary-made artillery piece during an attack. I had no telephoto lens. The explosion knocked me unconscious, but I got the photograph.” — Võ An Khánh
Galerie Bao and Dogma Collection are pleased to co-present "Mangrove Theatre: The Wartime Photography of Võ An Khánh" showcasing the extraordinary documentary work of Võ An Khánh (1936-2023), who captured the hidden lives of guerrilla fighters in Vietnam's mangrove forests during the Vietnam-American War.
This exhibition of fifteen scenes reveals a remarkable body of work that blurs the boundaries between art and militancy, documentary and spectacle. With masks frequently appearing as motifs to protect identities and constant scenes of rehearsal and practice, Võ's images transform the forest into a site of surreal, wartime theater. Working with limited film exposures and developing negatives in the field using makeshift equipment and rice-filled ammunition boxes to combat moisture, Võ An Khánh created a collection that possesses both the compositional rigor of cinema and the authentic candor of photojournalism.
Featured artist
Võ An Khánh
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Drawing from the work of scholars such as Sylvia Shin Huey Chong and artists like Dinh Q. Lê, the presentation of Éléonore Tran investigates the merging of fictional and documentary imagery and its impact on cultural memory. She offers a critical reflection on the images produced in and about Vietnam during the American War (1955–1975). In contrast, Võ An Khánh’s rarely exhibited black-and-white photographs — reveal the everyday realities of those who lived, resisted, and survived in the mangrove forests of Vietnam.