Statement

While travelling across the border villages in Long An province, I met a lot of immigrant families living in such thatched houses. These people had no documentation, no degrees, no occupation, nor any clue when they had to suddenly relocate again. The makeshift huts made of leaves or rubber were a good-enough option for them. There were many photos with vibrant colors in those houses, capturing the owners standing amid a tulip garden or a world-famous landmark. The photo was produced by attaching one’s head onto a stranger’s body, and then embedding their image onto template backgrounds found on the Internet. The owners of these huts know nothing of the foreign places in those photos.

I invited a family to collaborate with me in the series Travels. I asked them about the places they had dreamt of visiting. One wanted to go to My Tho; the children wanted to see the ocean for once; a young man did not want to go anywhere; his only wish was to have a big motorbike. I asked a local photographer to create a series of photos for them as they wished. Together, we made the trips of our dreams. 

This series was displayed in a thatched house as the two slices of reality and dream in these people’s lives.