Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights ReservedThank you, Blurb!
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Friday, February 19, 2010
BLURB BOOK OF THE WEEK: My Brother's War
Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights ReservedPhotograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights ReservedThank you, Blurb!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
JESSICA HINES: My Brother's War
Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
The Reflection: "In September of 2009, I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington DC for the first time...What are missing from the wall are the names of those who died war-related deaths: from suicide, from injuries, and from exposure to harmful chemical substances." Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
The Reunion: “Brothers Forever” was a phrase often heard mentioned and saw written in their photo albums commemorating time together in the war." Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
The Remembrance: The toys, reminiscent of the games we played as children such as “cowboys and Indians”, embodied the notion of the cultural ideal role model for us. This “hero/tough-guy” role model was encouraged. Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights ReservedThe box stood packed away high on a closet shelf for over twenty-five years. Packed by my mother, it contained the letters, photographs, medals, and important papers that had once belonged to my deceased brother, Gary. It was serendipitous that I came to open the box and read the letters. Not having read them since I was a child, the time period was brought back to life for me. It was as if I could hear my brother speaking – it was as if he were still alive and I was listening to him talk about his life.
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Artist and storyteller Jessica Hines, uses the camera’s inherent quality as a recording device to explore illusion and to suggest truths that underlie the visible world. At the core of Hines’ work lies an inquisitive nature inspired by personal memory, experience and the unconscious mind. Hines began to cultivate her creative disposition early in life and her love of the arts led her to attend Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Continuing to pursue her interests, she studied photography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree. (from My Brother's War)
Jessica approached me to design a portfolio to best showcase her Photo Essay, My Brother's War. This was to be sort of a book 'dummy' to show potential publishers her intention behind her project in which she attempts to gain a better understanding of what happened to her brother, Gary, when he was a soldier in the Viet Nam War. Drafted, he served two years and returned home a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ten years later, he took his own life.
I was honored to be asked to work on this beautiful and moving project. I was impressed with the amount of research Jessica put into locating and speaking with her brother's wartime friends and attending the reunion of her brother's units in Viet Nam: The 178th ASHC, The Boxcars and the 132nd ASHC, Hercules, as well as traveling to Viet Nam to retrace her brother’s “footsteps”. Hines photographed her brother's letters, written home during his service in Viet Nam, which run throughout the seven chapters. I particularly wanted my cover design to reflect the emotion I felt when first imagining Gary's Army dog tags, the absence of the person.
Jessica approached me to design a portfolio to best showcase her Photo Essay, My Brother's War. This was to be sort of a book 'dummy' to show potential publishers her intention behind her project in which she attempts to gain a better understanding of what happened to her brother, Gary, when he was a soldier in the Viet Nam War. Drafted, he served two years and returned home a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ten years later, he took his own life.
I was honored to be asked to work on this beautiful and moving project. I was impressed with the amount of research Jessica put into locating and speaking with her brother's wartime friends and attending the reunion of her brother's units in Viet Nam: The 178th ASHC, The Boxcars and the 132nd ASHC, Hercules, as well as traveling to Viet Nam to retrace her brother’s “footsteps”. Hines photographed her brother's letters, written home during his service in Viet Nam, which run throughout the seven chapters. I particularly wanted my cover design to reflect the emotion I felt when first imagining Gary's Army dog tags, the absence of the person.
Jessica won a multitude of photography awards this past year, including the International Photography Awards: three Honorable Mention awards for Editorial: War/Conflict, Fine Art, and Deeper Perspective, PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris: 1st Place Fine Art and PX3 Book Award in People’s Choice Award, Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2009: Honorable Mention, The Mind’s Eye 2009 at The Center For Fine Art Photography: Director’s Award. Her work was selected by the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor, Stella Kramer, and published in Portfolio Showcase, Volume 3, 2009. Her portfolio was chosen as one of Photolucida’s 2008 Critical Mass Top 50 and she is a finalist for The Aftermath Project Grant in 2010, among others. Jessica's work has been selected for Houston's upcoming FotoFest 2010 Portfolio Review in March and her work continues to be seen in The New Yorker magazine.
View Jessica Hines Portfolio
"My Brother's War" on BLURB
LENSCULTURE Weblog
May 2010 Update: Congratulations! Jessica Hines is a winner in the PDN Photo Annual. One of her images from "My Brother's War" is in PDN's May issue!
A note about Blurb. While Blurb is an excellent showcase for your work and self publishing your books, to be able to "Preview" your entire book, not just the first 20 pages, you must post it "for sale". A 12" x 12" edition available on premium paper is very steep. We originally posted the entire project for the benefit of inquiring publishers overseas, but we've both had such great feedback, we hope you will enjoy viewing it also!
Sunday, September 6, 2009
DON HONG-OAI: Asian Pictorialism
Winter Fog, Vietnam, 1974Photograph (c) Don Hong-Oai/All rights reserved
Hurrying Down Path, Vietnam, 1974Photograph (c) Don Hong-Oai/All rights reserved
Spring Morning on River Li, Guilin, 1998Photograph (c) Don Hong-Oai/All rights reserved
Spring Bamboo BoatPhotograph (c) Don Hong-Oai/All rights reserved
DON HONG-OAI was born 1929 in the city of Guangzhou in the Guangdong Province of China. As the youngest of 24 siblings and half-siblings, Don was sent off to live in a Chinese community in Saigon, Vietnam after the death of his parents. At 7 years old he was apprenticed to a Saigon portrait studio where he learned the basics of photography. Don remained an apprentice for a decade, after which he worked a series of odd jobs. Although he was desperately poor, he managed to save US$48 to buy his first camera. In 1950, at the age of 21, he began studying at the Vietnam National Art University.
He stayed in Vietnam during the war, but in 1979 a bloody border war broke out between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China. The Vietnamese government instituted a series of repressive policies that targeted ethnic Chinese living in the country. As a result of those policies, Don became one of the millions of “boat people” who fled Vietnam to the U.S. in the late 1970s. At the age of 50, speaking no English and not knowing anyone living in the U.S., Don arrived in San Francisco. He lived within San Francisco's Chinatown where he was able to set up a small darkroom to create his photographs. By selling prints of his photographs at local street fairs, Don was able to make enough money to return to China periodically to shoot photographs. He was also able to study with Master Long Chin-San in Taiwan.
Long Chin-San, who died in 1995 at the age of 104, had developed a style of photography based on the long tradition of landscape imagery in Chinese art. For centuries Chinese artists had been creating dramatic monochromatic landscapes using simple brushes and ink. These paintings weren’t intended to accurately depict nature, but to interpret nature’s emotional impact. Don’s new work modeled on the ancient style combined (pre-digital photo compositing) the traditional motifs of Chinese paintings, such as mountains, birds, tree's and boats, using more than one negative to create the delicate beauty in each landscape. Realism was not the goal.
Don's work began to draw critical attention in the 1990s. He no longer had to sell his photography at street fairs; he was now represented by an agent and his work was being sold in galleries throughout the U.S., in Europe and in Asia. His work was sought after by private art collectors, corporate buyers and museums. Don passed away in San Francisco in 2004. More bio here.
Rare original sepia toned gelatin-silver prints made by Don Hong-Oai with his hand-written calligraphy titles and red chop signatures, contact Anne Kelly: Photo-Eye Gallery
He stayed in Vietnam during the war, but in 1979 a bloody border war broke out between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China. The Vietnamese government instituted a series of repressive policies that targeted ethnic Chinese living in the country. As a result of those policies, Don became one of the millions of “boat people” who fled Vietnam to the U.S. in the late 1970s. At the age of 50, speaking no English and not knowing anyone living in the U.S., Don arrived in San Francisco. He lived within San Francisco's Chinatown where he was able to set up a small darkroom to create his photographs. By selling prints of his photographs at local street fairs, Don was able to make enough money to return to China periodically to shoot photographs. He was also able to study with Master Long Chin-San in Taiwan.
Long Chin-San, who died in 1995 at the age of 104, had developed a style of photography based on the long tradition of landscape imagery in Chinese art. For centuries Chinese artists had been creating dramatic monochromatic landscapes using simple brushes and ink. These paintings weren’t intended to accurately depict nature, but to interpret nature’s emotional impact. Don’s new work modeled on the ancient style combined (pre-digital photo compositing) the traditional motifs of Chinese paintings, such as mountains, birds, tree's and boats, using more than one negative to create the delicate beauty in each landscape. Realism was not the goal.
Don's work began to draw critical attention in the 1990s. He no longer had to sell his photography at street fairs; he was now represented by an agent and his work was being sold in galleries throughout the U.S., in Europe and in Asia. His work was sought after by private art collectors, corporate buyers and museums. Don passed away in San Francisco in 2004. More bio here.
Rare original sepia toned gelatin-silver prints made by Don Hong-Oai with his hand-written calligraphy titles and red chop signatures, contact Anne Kelly: Photo-Eye Gallery
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