Courtesy Mashable
The Vietnam War is well-known as the televised war, but there’s a treasure trove of photographs yet to be discovered.
An Australian artist is looking to exhibit thousands of images of the Vietnam War, the majority of which were purchased on the Internet. It’s been titled the Vietnam Archive Project.
The project began as “pure coincidence” for Melbourne-based Phuong Ngo, of Vietnamese background, who was looking on eBay for photographs for an art school project relating to his family’s history in 2010.
Ngo bought his first set of 400 slides out of curiosity, purchased for around US$400 from a widow who was selling her dead husband’s collection on eBay.
“That basically snowballed into a monstrosity of a project that’s been going for six years now, and it’ll probably keep going until the day I die,” Ngo told Mashable Australia.
The collection has since swelled to more than 10,000 slides, and around 20 reels of 8mm and 16mm film. Most of these photos tell an intimate story of those serving in the armed forces.
“They’re not official photographs by the government or the media, they’re photographs by people who experienced the war from a very personal perspective. So there’s a lot of monotony portrayed in them. A lot are framed from a curious perspective — weird insects, weird animals, guys just mucking about,” Ngo said.
“Then there’s somewhat more graphic stuff. The occasional body pops up, helicopters, planes, bombs, things like that.”
Ngo has also acquired objects and documents, ranging from maps of North Vietnamese booby traps to so-called “fan letters” by women who have sent photographs of themselves to soldiers.
“Some of it is military related, some of it is dated back to the turn last of last century — around the time of French colonialism. It’s just grown and grown since that first acquisition,” Ngo said.
Since that first purchase, Ngo said these sets of slides and photographs are up for sale online less regularly, meaning that he tries to purchase them quickly when they pop up. “Most of the time I’m willing to pay quite a bit, I’ll deal with debt later,” he said, laughing.
“I’ve paid upwards of US$1500 for a set — that’s a set of four really detailed photo albums that details a guy’s life from the moment he finishes high school, with a letter from his uncle congratulating him, right to the moment when Richard Nixon signs his death certificate,” Ngo said.
Ngo’s photographs will be exhibited in 2017, as part of the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival at The Substation in Melbourne. The exhibition will be shaped around themes of colonialism, weaponry, the role of women in the war, cinema and environmental impacts in Vietnam.
In the meantime, Ngo is archiving them at home to maintain their integrity, but is slowly managing to digitise his collection. “I’m trying, I’m trying,” he said. Currently, Ngo is purchasing photos at a rate that is outpacing his ability to digitise them.
“If there’s something I desperately need to see the detail of, I’ll scan it, if it’s something that will play a key or advisory role into new artwork, I’ll digitise it. So there is a priority when dealing with these,” Ngo said.
“We’ll see what happens in the long term. Eventually this collection will need an actual home that will allow me to access it. Then what will happen to it when I die, that I don’t know,” he said.
IMAGES: PHUONG NGO
