HCMC – A Presentation about “Conceptual Photography”

Tue 06 Sep 2011, 6.30 pm
Zerostation

From Zerostation:

This time ZeroStation would like to invite you guys to participate in a presentation on “conceptual photography” by photographer Ngo Dinh Truc, one of very few Vietnamese photographers working with photography in conceptual way. In his presentation, Ngo Dinh Truc will both introduce theoretically and historically on conceptual photography and illustrate his introduction by one of his own conceptual work, “The idle talks”.

In the Ngo Dinh Truc’s “idle talks”, quoted from the essay “ redefining the past and transforming public space, two strategies of Vietnamese artists in the new millennium” by Nhu Huy, Nhu Huy wrote:

“Unlike Le Thi Viet Ha’s intimate approach to the past, Ngo Dinh Truc’s concern about the past through the work “Idle Talk” is shown by the use of famous old images of Sai Gon, edited by using Photoshop to insert his own comments – seemingly an excuse for the artist to question human beings’ apparent present consensus definitions about the past.

The past here, through the form of old pictures printed together with the artist’s comment, is no longer a silent and closed entity that is separated and well-defined. Because of the suddenly opened gap between the comments on the picture and the picture itself, that past was re-awakened and became an open source of thinking, putting forth many questions for the viewers…”