MARK F ERICKSON | ĐỖ VĂN HÙNG PHOTOGRAPHY
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video remix (CHOPSTICKs ALLEY)
In 1972, I was born Đỗ Văn Hùng in Saigon, Vietnam.  In 1974, I was separated from my Vietnamese family.  In 1975, in the closing days of the war, I was evacuated by the American as part of Operation Babylift.  I was adopted in western New York and renamed Mark F. Erickson.  Growing up, I knew and thought nothing of Vietnam 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).
 
In 1993, I returned to Vietnam with my manual 35mm film camera to see my birth country with my own eyes.  Through these images of ordinary people doing ordinary things in ordinary places, I had a glimpse into a life I never had the opportunity to live.  And twenty-five years later, it is also a glimpse into a Vietnam—now transformed by rapid economic growth—that no longer exists.
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  • About
  • Vietnam
  • Dorchester
  • New York
  • Reviews
  • CV
  • Buy / Contact