Today we share the work of Vietnamese photographer Duy Phuong Le Nguyen from Tân An, Long An. While studying photography at the University of Theatre and Cinema in Ho Chi Minh City, he was selected to participate in an artist in residency program at ENSP Arles in France in 2008. Duy’s works have been exhibited in the Museum of Quai Branly in Paris and L’Espace in Hanoi, Vietnam. He describes his work as combining a documentary approach with staging. Today, we share his series, Going With the Flow.
Going With the Flow
I follow the life of people whose destiny is linked to the tides. I’m getting tied to their lives; daily and inner life made sublime by this penetrating space.
The lake is like a scenery where, like in a reverie, the reality of the landscape mingles with postures and objects – dreamlike part of my work. I’m sinking into moving waters and, getting carried as they go back and forth, I discover the stories they unroll. People, nature and memories appear and disappear, little twinklings on the cycle of fate.
Three years of comings and goings at the lake; I’m trying to understand the purpose of my work but it’s slipping from my grasp, like water inexorably escapes the hands which want to keep it. Fragility of the childhood, separation, loss and wait, however, the water leaves its mark in me like in Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, the mark of the people’s lives it told me.
To view more of Duy’s work please visit his website.