This presentation reflects on the images produced in and about Vietnam during the American War (1955–1975). From the conflict endures what Sylvia Shin Huey Chong has called the Triptych of Vietnam: a child burned by napalm, a monk in self-immolation, and a summary execution on the streets of Saigon. These shocking images were embodied and reanimated in numerous Hollywood productions.
In his image-weaving series, the artist Dinh Q. Lê connected the figure of the call girl in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now with that of General N., both raising their pistols in unison. Fiction merges with reality, and over time the war becomes a reference point in popular culture. It permeates Vietnamese territory itself, where many landmarks are sites of massacre or combat. Visitors pose with fake helmets and bright smiles, leaving with bullet-shaped keychains or faux Zippos engraved with Hollywood quotes about Vietnam and the war.
Võ An Khánh’s photographs—still too little known outside Vietnam—disrupt this imagery of fire and blood. Replacing the garish colors of Hollywood, black and white allows viewers to focus on the men, women, and children who, for a time, made their homes in the mangrove forests. Here, too, the war is present: the seriousness of meetings, the gravity of wounds treated beneath mosquito nets. Some of these images are harsh, yet they do not rely on shock. On the contrary, a quiet poetry emanates from them, perhaps enabling us to contemplate them more deeply.
Beyond accusations of propaganda, which often lead viewers to glance too briefly or too superficially at photographs from “the other side,” Võ An Khánh’s work can be understood as a rich testament to the American–Vietnamese War. It offers a perspective that invites us to imagine alternative narratives to the dominant story written by the victors.
*The conversation will be in French
About the speaker
Eléonore Tran is a PhD candidate in contemporary art history at Université Paris 8. Her doctoral thesis examines the role of photography within the artistic practices of the Vietnamese diaspora. Focusing on the work of second- and third-generation contemporary artists, she explores how photography operates both as a material for (re)constituting the past and as a medium for shaping new narratives of self-identity and community. She has collaborated with several contemporary art spaces in Vietnam, including the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art and Mơ Art Space. She has also taken part in various events addressing the practice and role of photography in the Vietnamese diaspora, such as Photo Hanoi’23, as well as seminars in France (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Sciences Po Paris, etc.) and in Vietnam (Fulbright Vietnam, Sàn Art). Her writing includes reflections on the legacies of exile among post-refugee Vietnamese generations published in Trans Asia Photography (Duke University Press) and the magazine Outsider.
