Description

My research also took me to the border town of Long An, Vietnam, where many undocumented, ethnic Vietnamese families live on boats or makeshift huts, waiting to be naturalized someday. Without papers or a job or degree, they live in uncertainty brought on by the fact that they might be uprooted at any given moment. On the walls of these temporary huts, I saw colorful pictures of their inhabitants standing in a tulip field or in front of a world-famous landmark. The photographer had cropped out the subjects’ heads, grafted them onto stock images of a body, and added in a stock background. I decided to work with one of these families for the Travels series (2014–2015). I asked them where they would like to travel to most: some wanted to go to My Tho, a pair of little girls wanted to be by the seaside at least once in their lives, and there was a young boy who didn’t actually want to travel at all, but to own a big motorbike instead. I invited a local photographer to take pictures for them as per their requests. Together, we took them on a journey to their dream destinations.

Description from “No More, Not Yet” Exhibition Brochure, 2023, p. 8.