MARK F ERICKSON | ĐỖ VĂN HÙNG PHOTOGRAPHY
  • About
  • Vietnam
  • Dorchester
  • New York
  • Reviews
  • CV
  • Buy / Contact

Preface (Revised)

8/12/2020

0 Comments

 
​In 1972, I was born Đỗ Văn Hùng in Saigon, Vietnam. In the closing days of the war, as part of Operation Babylift, I was evacuated on a Pan American Airways 747 from Tan Son Nhat to San Francisco International and, after medical processing in Harmon Hall at the Presidio, to Buffalo Niagara where I was adopted in West Seneca, New York and renamed Mark F. Erickson.  

As a child, I had a natural inclination to drawing, painting, and photography. For the last, my older brother had built a darkroom in our basement, so I had access to everything I needed to learn the basics. Regarding Vietnam, I knew and thought nothing of the country and only passively learned about it from the stories America was telling itself about the war, mainly through the movies of the 1980s.  

As a student at Harvard College, I made my first Vietnamese-American friends, studied Vietnamese history from a Vietnamese perspective with Hue-Tam Ho Tai, and learned documentary photography with Chris Killip and David Goldblatt. From Killip and Goldblatt, I learned how powerful photo essays challenged the national narratives of the English (In Flagrante), the South Africans (In Boksburg), and the Americans (Robert Frank’s The Americans).  

Highly influenced by what I learned from them, I returned to Vietnam in 1993 with a manual 35mm camera, a basic tripod, and a lot of film to see my birth country with my own eyes. I spent countless days riding my gearless bicycle around Hanoi, burning images into my memory. Given that I was always seen with a tripod strapped to my back, my nickname amongst the few English-speaking foreigners was Tripod Boy. Beyond Hanoi, I traveled by bus in the north to Lang Son and Haiphong, and by train southward to Quang Tri, Hue, Da Nang, Hoi An, and Saigon, which had been renamed Ho Chi Minh City.  

Upon my return to the United States, I started the work that you now hold in your hands. Suffice it to say, it has taken a lot longer to finish than I ever imagined. So long that the world in these images no longer exists: the one after the conflicts with America (1954-1975), Cambodia (1975-1989), and China (1979), but before the rapid increase in economic development that continues to this day.  

Many excellent photo essays have been published about Vietnam, mainly about the war years. Some are powerful but also necessarily ugly, as war is without censorship from Washington or a makeover from Hollywood. This book is not about war or famous people or infamous places. Instead, it is about the beauty that I found in ordinary people doing ordinary things in ordinary places. It is a glimpse into a life I never had the opportunity to live.  
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Mark F. Erickson aka Đỗ Văn Hùng is the author of the photobook Other Streets:  Scenes from a Life in Vietnam not Lived.

    Mark's photobook has been exhibited at the L.A. Center of Photography, the Davis Orton Gallery, and the Griffin Museum of Photography.  He has been profiled in The Photobook Journal, diaCRITICS:  the arts & culture of the Vietnamese and SE Asian diaspora website, the Worksleeve podcast, Chopsticks Alley, and Harvard Magazine.

    Đỗ Văn Hùng was born in Saigon in 1972, evacuated as part of Operation Babylift at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, renamed Mark F. Erickson, and raised by an American family in western New York. At Harvard College, he studied documentary photography with Chris Killip (United Kingdom) and David Goldblatt (South Africa).  He currently works in New York City.

    Archives

    November 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • About
  • Vietnam
  • Dorchester
  • New York
  • Reviews
  • CV
  • Buy / Contact