Not just a pretty picture: Vietnam’s newest photo collective challenges age-old views

When you ask a person in Vietnam what photography is, most people imagine weddings, travel or smiling faces but never a photo story or documentary and abstract styles, says Nguyen-Anh Mai, one of four founders of Matca, a newly formed photography collective in Vietnam that aims to not only challenge this view within the country but outside as well.

Photographs by Matca co-founder Binh Dang from “Small Things,” a story about Thien Giao, a home that provides housing and assistance to victims of Agent Orange. “I have seen many documentaries about victims of Agent Orange that too often focus on their pains and despair. In this series of photos, I want to capture the positive interactions and happiness among these folks instead,” writes Binh.

“For the last 25 to 30 years, photography in Vietnam was just focusing on the bright side of Vietnam. You see people smiling, looking happy, but you never see the other side…it’s the Vietnam that people outside Vietnam see but it’s not how we see it. We want the international world to see Vietnam through Vietnamese eyes,” Nguyen-Anh said.

This “pretty picture” of Vietnam has not happened by chance. According to independent watchdog group Freedom House, the country’s media environment is one of the harshest in all of Asia with authorities using “both legal mechanisms and physical harassment to punish and intimidate critical reporters.”

“The government is very scared of photography in general,” said Dat Vu, one of Matca’s founders. Dat mentioned an instance of the government blocking an art gallery’s sale of a photograph of decaying infrastructure because it portrayed Vietnam in a bad light.

Photograph by Dat Vu from “Interview: The Journey Between Dreams of Dat Vu.” “I intend this series to be more or less like a dream sequence without a straightforward narrative. I like to work my brain in order to form some connections between the images, like how you travel from one to another taking into consideration the form and content being presented,” said Dat.

“I myself have to be careful about it as well because if it’s too obvious to the viewers that I’m trying to say something about what’s going on in Vietnam then the government can pick it up,” said Dat, whose work has a dream-like, abstract feel.

Despite these media constraints, Matca isn’t looking to create controversy through their work but rather to show people that photography can be more complex than a single image. “We are aiming to open the word of photography through meaning,” said Nguyen-Anh of Matca, or ‘Mắt Cá’, which means “fisheye” in Vietnamese.

Photos by Matca co-founder Linh Pham from “No Mud, No Lotus.” “After the fall of Saigon, Vietnam came to an era of reconstructing and building a new country as the socialist model began to collapse. Today its economy is booming thanks to a shift in political views that has opened up the country, along with that, there are dramatically changes in term of culture and society that embrace Vietnamese especially the youngsters. This project is a collection of photos simply depicts the country as it is, both happiness and sorrow,” writes Linh.

Just as a fisheye lens captures life at super wide angles, the collective hopes “to turn a wide lens on an increasingly overlooked community of Vietnamese photographers” through featuring work of emerging photographers on their website. Their biggest goal is to nurture and develop the photographic community within Vietnam by providing professional advice and eventually portfolio reviews and workshops.

“They don’t know how to go professional because we don’t have formal education, we don’t have a community that supports each other. So we want this to be a platform for emerging artists, we want to support them,” said Nguyen-Anh.

While Vietnam does have some organizations dedicated to photography, most focus on street or wedding photography, single images, equipment or editing skills. Matca wants to show how photography can be used to tell stories and that photographs can take on new life forms once printed for a book or a gallery.

“We have to do something more meaningful for the community and for ourselves,” said Nguyen-Anh.

Photo by Dinh Nguyen from “Cinematic Photographs of Dinh Nguyen.”

Matca was founded on Oct. 12, 2016, by Binh Dang, Nguyen-Anh Mai, Linh Pham, contributors to Everyday Vietnam, and Dat Vu. Subscribe to their publications by visiting the Matca website.