Photo collections from Viet Nam were made to capture the city of Hanoi in a volatile state, to examine photographs from different angles and to apply the student ' s optics to a different cultural environment. The work consists of two diametrically opposite collections made during emigration and training at Arts Bournemouth University at Art Photography and Film: 1. Hanoi’s Dreams 2. Vietnam
After careful research of an entire nation and culture through different approaches to photography, I was able to achieve results in describing the culture of such a distant country for Russian people. I believe that this will help to make the picture of Hanoi and the country of Viet Nam truly true.
The Street Photo method has been chosen because it does not sink into the heart of people, the city, or any object in the photo. This method captures exactly the random moment that happens in plain sight, i.e. on the street. It’s the image that’s obviously building the city. Through the outside and the simple, I want to go deeper and explore which Hana is inside.
Hanoi’s Dreams
«Hanoi’s Dreams» is one of the two photo collections I made during my studies and my life in Hanoi. The main idea of this series is to demonstrate my view of Hanoi as a city and its inhabitants.
I wanted to show Hana how a lost memory pops up in a good nostalgic dream.
When I lived in Hanoi for about two years, I began to feel this city as a nostalgic dream. He’s already painted in soft pink and dark blue flowers. Hanoi, it’s like he’s been asking for tapes and memories. I put it in the photos. At that point, I started writing Roman about Lake Ty Ho, and there was the entire emigrant environment near that lake, so it often appears in the photo collection.
I wanted to tell you what’s invisible to the eye. The magic of such an Asian city with its own manners and traditions, combining progress and innovation.
Such a collection could not have been done without photographs on the film, so half of the collection is made up of it. The tape can breathe, so in a pink dream compartment, it gives a sense of nostalgia to Hanoi, which many have not even been in.
Hanoi is a city of resistance, a city that has created the impossible. Freedom mutiny-- The Tete offensive was a historical miracle. That’s why the locals call Hana a city of miracles. The war is over. Maybe magic is in the details now.
The sense of regret has entered Hanoi at the internal level since the war, but people have decided to survive it with a fairy tale, so the fairy tale with regret is what Hana is now, and I reflect it in the photo collection of Hanoi’s Dreams.
Vietnam
The Vietnam photo collection is a different kind of work. It literally contrasts with the first collection.
As I was thinking about the first photo collection where I looked into the inner people of Hanoi and wanted to depict them from their point of view of regret and sleep, I thought that for an ordinary person who had never fallen into the culture of Hanoi, I would never understand that. The opposite decision was therefore made: the creation of the Vietnam collection. This collection speaks of this cultural environment more directly than the first, but leaving behind the same elements of sleep and regret to remain honest.
One of the strongest photos of the collection is the girl with the self-carrying. She didn’t live very rich and probably saw the first person to take her off, so she was completely genuinely surprised. Even here, you can see the propagian layer of Viet Nam trasing through a self-carrying badge. He’s been covering the country since the war, but people prefer to treat him as a self-carrying badge.
Like the first collection, I couldn’t do without the tape, but this time it served a different task. I used the tape to broadcast the obsolescence of life in Hanoi, as unstable and, in fact, backward. And that’s where every CIS resident who’s been through a hard time will be able to see something familiar in a completely distant country, which is amazing.
However, each photo still points to a certain identity that is almost impossible to confuse. It’s safe to say, «Yes! It’s Hanoy, the one who won the great war, the one who’s been through and is now trying to get up, despite everything that’s come down on him.»
They’re very interesting talking about Hanoi, the contrasts around this place. They’re everywhere. The Ferrari next to the beggar is the normal state of the city.
And yet, in every photograph, there remains the regret that is still painted here by both the harsh truth and the fear and the poverty. Yet, despite this, there is also a hope that that city of dreams holds, so the collections complement each other, creating a completely incredible picture of a city so far away and unknown to a Russian man.
You can’t forget the creative emigration that found one of the biggest houses in Hanoi. Without it, the picture of this city would not have been complete, since these migrants are changing the city for the better in terms of culture and education.
Perhaps the main element of Hanoi is, in principle, an accident. It is she who characterizes this city from victory in war and economic recovery to simple household things, strange encounters and random human resources themselves, because the street is chosen not for nothing, but to pass on this accident.
This accident expresses the main feature of the whole city, if you describe it on the same canvas — kindness, beauty, and hope, though with regret.
I gave my vision, which I received in two years of full-blown life and the lives of Vietnamese on an equal footing with them. And in the end, it’s up to everyone to decide which Hanoi and Vietnam are for them: the dream or the dream with the voice of regret, the poor gray country or something else, I only give a visual vision and accompany a distant and difficult way of interpreting an entire nation.
THE END