Traditionally, Vietnam has been represented in folk mythology as the Three Sisters: Central (Trung), South (Nam), and North (Bac).

After twenty years in exile, I returned to Vietnam during the summer of 1995, and made subsequent trips in the spring of 1997 and in the summer of 1999. With the help of my family still living there, I covered portions of the South on the first trip, reached the Central region on the second, and ventured into the North on the last trip to explore the third of the Three Sisters.

Photographic images of Vietnam are usually synonymous with images of war. Photographs of Vietnam consists of three series: Panoramics of Vietnam, Portraits of Vietnam, and Polaroids of Vietnam. Although each series is created independently and can stand alone, together they present a veiled perspective of Vietnam apart from the war.

The earliest series, the Panoramics of Vietnam, are landscapes. They are photographed from the beaches of Ham Tan to the hills of Dalat in the south, from the temples of Hue to the mountains of Danang in Central Vietnam, and from the lakes of Hanoi to the waters of Halong Bay in the North. These limited editions are laser printed on handmade Indian Rag & Wheat Paper.

The second series, the Portraits of Vietnam, capture the native people in their everyday lives. They portray the poor but unworried lives of the Vietnamese in the fashion of the earliest portraits, the Daguerreotypes. These, too, are limited editions and are laser printed on a Nepalese Lokta Pinto Paper.

The Polaroids of Vietnam is an unforeseen but welcomed opportunity to create a collaborative work with my late father, Bill Farmer. Papa was a civilian military advisor working in Vietnam, and had taken many slides of his travels there in the late 60's. After his death in 1973, the slides were sent to his brother in the U.S. There they remained hidden for twenty-five years, until rediscovered in the summer of 1998. I feel fortunate to be able to see Vietnam through the lens of Papa's eyes. I use his slides to make Emulsion Transfers, where the images are exposed onto Polaroid film and literally skinned off the paper backing and reattached to a Coconut Sage Paper.

All three series share an appearance of antiquity. As seen in the work, the land and its people have not changed significantly in three decades. Despite decades of foreign occupation and the devastation of war, Photographs of Vietnam is created as a tribute and celebration to the enduring beauty of Vietnam.

Scroll of Vietnam is a new work for me using an artist book format, the scroll. Please be patient as it is a large file and may take a few minutes to download. I hope you will find it worthwhile.