KVT – Karnow @ Art Vietnam ….A Gorgeously Visual, Often Emotional, and Definitely Nostalgic Affair

KVT joins the crowds flocking in to enjoy Catherine Karnow’s photographs

One of Catherine Karnow’s very recognizable photographs was used as the front cover of LONELY PLANET VIETNAM 2007 and is probably her most counterfeited work.

Those were the halcyon days for the provincial boys who used to immigrate to the city and start off their urban lifestyle by hawking postcards and photocopied books around the tourist areas (far more halcyon for the pirates in Tran Tien and elsewhere who had access to copying machines than for the adolescents whose few phrases of English saved them from slipping slightly lower down the ladder as shoeshine boys) The Lonely Planet featured in their trays of books though it was buyer beware. They may have had the most recent cover but contents were often years out of date.

The powers that be were already beginning to hustle the boys off the streets as the countdown to 2010 and the city’s millennium party was being organized and a lot of stuff had to swept out of sight underneath the carpet, into ‘refuges’, or back to the provinces

One of the other prominently displayed books was THE SORROW OF WAR by Bao Ninh and in Karnow’s photographic exhibition at Art Vietnam she has a print of him in the 1990ies when his book was persona non grata

Karnow is the daughter of famous author Stanley Karnow- whose thick book VIETNAM -A HISTORY also used to crop up amidst the wares of the provincial boys although it was apt to have pages missing or upside down.

She first visited Vietnam with her father in 1990

This is where her exhibition commences

First with a misty welcome and a song

General Vo Nguyen Giap, the mastermind behind the victory at Dien Bien Phu, was a friend and fan of her fathers and she was invited to go with him when he returned to the battlefield for the first time in 30 years.

She fell under the great man’s spell and thus one wall is devoted to his memory.

At the funeral procession of General Giáp many people were holding Catherine Karnow’s photo of the General

Karnow was first in Hanoi in the early days of Doi Moi

These were the days when experiments with a market economy started to swing and one of the most telling works in this section of the show is an ode to coke-though in those days the signs were all hand painted and as Pete Seegar would sing ‘where have all the sign painters gone, long time passing?’

It was a loosening up era when foreigners began their quiet NGO and corporate invasion and gradually became an expat contingent

All of the photographs have explanatory captions near them

Karnow is famous in her own right as a photographer for National Geographic and her section on LEGACIES OF WAR (the American variety and its lasting legacies) is heartfelt photo journalism

The people affected by Agent Orange:

And other complications born from invasion such as the Amerasian dilemma:

A large and final section deals with NEW VIETNAM, the one that most of us expats are more familiar with

As a writer states in a piece about the show in the Huffington Post , it’s an era where gradually the road signs that used to eulogize and romanticize laborers and farmers and the virtues of a socialist paradise have been overtaken and swamped by the gigantic billboards that romanticize the American dream which has well and truly outpaced the initial Honda Dream

In part, the writer says: the population is ‘growing younger and younger. The country’s population, passing 90 million, has more than doubled since the Vietnam/American War ended. Two out of three Vietnamese have no direct memory of the war. Everyone instead is in the grip of modernity.

Vietnam’s society has become complex, with many different social strata, and increasingly expressive: filmmakers, artists, fashion designers and singers are pushing the cultural envelope daily. It is no wonder that a young gay couple in Catherine’s photo have no qualms hugging each other in a club

Although same-sex marriage isn’t legal, Vietnam is at the forefront of gay rights the region and gay weddings are not uncommon.

Along with a fledgling civil society, there is a growing middle class……’

These are the ones, especially the younger ones, whose lifestyles are so radically different from those known by their parents

Of course the glitz and tinsel has its other side and while a minority strut about enjoying the fruits of the dream it’s that great majority of have nots who will probably feature in future editions of Karnow’s work about Vietnam.

It’d be fun to see Karnow’s take on the newest variety of expats-the young adventurers, those who probably put the wars against French and American occupation in the same mythological context as the Greek siege of Troy. They far outnumber the earlier prototypes that yearned for golf courses, French style homes near Tay Ho, and servants for the kids-even a 4 wheel drive or two.

Her mother and father both lived in Vietnam in the fifties and it’s the country where both father and daughter’s careers blossomed. Where-as the father recorded the absolute hellishness of the war in words and in TV images, the daughter is continuing to chronicle ‘Vietnam’s long night’s journey into day’ with images and accompanying text.

The book that goes hand in hand with the exhibition is an outstanding buy

It’s not a definitive work about Vietnam but due to it’s historical scope it is an important one…and judging from the audience of Vietnamese-of all ages- streaming through and staying with the images, it rings a bell for many.

To finish……an image that from Doi Moi until today is, at first glance, timeless. Torn Jeans and T shirts date it more effectively