Vietnam War through foreign journalists’ eyes

About 50 photos on the war in Vietnam taken by the late
photo-journalist Henri Huet and his colleagues are on display at an
exhibition that is opening in France from Feb.9 till April.10.

The event is being held to mark the 40 th ‑ death anniversary of the
well-known photographer, who lost his life when the military helicopter
he was riding in was shot down over Laos .

The
collection captures different aspects in the war from the pain, fatigue,
frustration and grittiness to a gamut of emotions.

Highlight of the display is a photo named Thomas Cole, which was used as
a cover of LIFE magazine, depicting a young medic of the First Cavalry
division, tending other soldiers despite his own injuries.

Sharon, a visitor, said she felt that she was witnessing what happened
dozens of years ago when viewing the photos and was impressed with
images of American soldiers’ daily life as well as what Vietnamese
people had to suffer from.

Henri Huet, who was a
half-French and half-Vietnamese, worked for the United Press
International (UPI) and then transferred to the Associated Press (AP)
during his 20-year career./.

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Hanoi through eyes of French photographer

If he had more time, Nicolas Cornet, a French photo-journalist would
have talked more about Hanoi both in French and Vietnamese. However,
he prefers to use his photos to tell his stories.

Cornet said he has closely followed the changes in people and Hanoi
through his own photo journalism. That is why when visiting an
exhibition showcasing Cornet’s photos of Hanoi at the French Culture
Centre L’Espace in late 2010, many people who were born and grew up in
the city suddenly recognised scenes they had taken for granted for a
long time.

Hanoi in his photos is not merely a
reminiscence, but is always moving. Viewers can see the city through
photos portraying people’s daily lives, high-rise buildings or ancient,
moss covered pagodas.

“His photos are unexpectedly
lively,” a common comment made by many visitors. For them, Cornet’s
photos are beautiful, not only in terms of lay-out and colour, but also
of containing the city’s flavours such as steamed glutinous rice and
green tea that are served on the city’s pavement kiosks.

After three years of collecting images and ideas, Cornet has published
a pictorial book about Hanoi to celebrate the city’s 1,000 th
anniversary.

Since 1987, Nicolas Cornet has spent a
couple of months each year returning to Vietnam and feels it is his
“home country”.

Besides working for many of Europe
’s well-known daily newspapers and magazines such as L’Espresso, Mare,
Le Republica, Figaro Magazine, Le Monde, Ulysse, Geo, Grands Reportages
and Nouvel Observateur, Cornet has given lectures on photography and
press photography. He has already hosted a series of personal
exhibitions in France , Germany , Switzerland and Vietnam. /.

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Exhibition focuses on ever-changing Indochina

A photo exhibition by French photographer Sebastien Laval, entitled
Communities Through Time, has opened at L'Espace, the French cultural
centre in Hanoi.

The black-and-white photos portray the life and
culture of people in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue, as well as
Cambodia's Angkor Wat and Luang Prabang in Laos. Laval's treatment of
floating houses, flickering cooking fires, the innocent smiles of kids,
the austere expression on the face of an ethnic man, or a tobacco pipe
between a woman's lips, captures the enigma that endures in this region.

The
photos include portraits and depict both traditional customs and
changes in people's lives. Images in opposition, such as traditional
clothes and satellite dishes, old roofs and asphalt roads, reflect the
changes in the lives of the ethnic people. The images have no titles,
allowing the viewer to freely think, feel and discover the characters,
to "try to meet them, talk to them, look at them and understand them,"
Laval said.

"The way I take photos is not to tell people that I am taking photos," Laval said. "I make no arrangement for the images."

One
morning, Laval said he came to a Lao village and met a young girl
carrying her brother in front of her house. By the afternoon, she had
become acquainted with Laval, who was able to capture a photo of her
sitting on sand with a radiant smile.

"If I hadn't come closer to
her, I wouldn't have had that smile," he said. "I realised that people
still speak and have a mutual understanding even if they don't use the
same language."

Born in 1973, Laval discovered photography when
he was given a camera by his father. He moved to Paris to work as an
assistant for a photo studio in 1992 and subsequently began working as a
professional in Poitiers.

Laval visited Vietnam for the first
time in 1995 and has accumulated thousands of images of people in about
20 Vietnamese ethnic groups, which he intends to publish in a book.

The current exhibition runs through February 11 at L'Espace, 24 Trang Tien Street, in Hanoi. /.

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Arts in spotlight as youth mark millennium

Young people will hold many activities from art performances to
exhibitions and street festivals across the country on Oct. 8 to
celebrate the 1,000 th birthday of Hanoi.

At a press
briefing in Hanoi on Oct.5, the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union
Central Committee said celebrations will start in Hanoi with an incense
offering ceremony at the King Ly Thai To statue in Hanoi and an art
performance of 3,500 children and young people of Hanoi and 65 young
foreigners around the Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi.

The programme will
continue with a performance of drums and clarinets as well as singing
and dancing at the same time in Hanoi , the central city of Da Nang
and Ho Chi Minh City .

Also in the morning of the day 1,000
children will draw paintings following the theme “I love Hanoi ” around
the Hoan Kiem Lake , while performances of songs and dances will
take place at universities, colleges and senior high-schools
nationwide.

As part of the programme, an exhibition of photos and
objects will be held around Thien Quang lake in Hanoi . Over 600
photos, documents and objects will be displayed under the theme of
“Vietnamese Youth – proud of 1,000 years of Thang Long-Hanoi and
National Construction”.

A three-day festival of young people of
ASEAN+3 (ASEAN countries and China , Japan and the Republic of
Korea ) will be held from Oct. 6. Participants of the festival plan to
take this occasion to boost exchanges and establish cooperation in many
fields.

Young people from the northern province of Bac Ninh
will bring a collage painting, the largest of its kind in Vietnam ,
to the festival.

In the evening of Oct. 8, a street festival will be held with singing, dancing and a parade around the centre of Hanoi .

On
Oct. 5, an exhibition of Bat Trang ceramic craft village of Hanoi
opened to celebrate Hanoi birthday. Also on display at the
exhibition are products from other traditional ceramic craft villages in
the country.

In the same vein, an artistic photo festival of 15
northern mountainous provinces also opened on Oct. 5 in Dien Bien Phu
city, Dien Bien province.

Exhibits are 205 photos selected from
1,219 entries to the festival, capturing the beauty of nature, the
people and their daily lives. Of these photos, 24 were awarded with
prizes.

Also, Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and the northern
province of Thai Binh jointly opened an exhibition of 120 photos of
Hanoi and Thai Binh./.

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Concert, photo exhibition celebrate Hanoi millennium

A concert entitled “International integration – toward future” took
place on the opening night of Hanoi millennium celebrations on
October 1 at the Hanoi Opera House.

The classical concert was held under the baton of Spanish conductor Carlos Cuesta.

Vietnamese
pianist Dang Thai Son and an orchestra accompaniment from the Vietnam
National Academy of Music played Concerto No 2, written for the piano by
S Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) and Symphony No 9 by Beethoven's (1770 –
1827).

Son was awarded first prize and the gold
medal at the 10th International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw
in 1980, marking the first time that an esteemed international
competition was won by an Asian pianist.

Earlier the same day, an
exhibition of 1,000 photos opened, introducing local and foreign
visitors with remarkable moments and impressions on the land and people
of Hanoi , the city of peace.

Entitled “ Hanoi – the city of
one thousand years”, the exhibition takes place at the Exhibition House,
No. 45, Trang Tien street , with 200 photos and at the Temple of
Literature with 800 others.

The selection of photos for the exhibition was launched by the Hanoi Photographers’ Association in 2006.

A
series of cultural and art programmes, including a lighting festival
and an ao dai (traditional dress) show was also held around the Hoan
Kiem Lake on the opening night./.

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Photo exhibit features old time Hanoi

Architect Doan Bac will exhibit a collection of black-and- white photos
in celebration of Hanoi's millennium to give Hanoians and visitors a
glimpse of the city in the 1800s.

Bac has spent many
years collecting the photos from a variety of sources and categorising
them in chronological order. "Collecting the photos take a lot of time
and effort," he said.

His father, a retired history
teacher, has helped him with his work. Bac's father was born in Hanoi
, where he has spent his entire life in a small alley of Lo Duc
Street . With his deep knowledge of Hanoi , looking at the old
photos always brings back a lot of interesting memories.

"In the old days, the sounds of Hanoi included bells chiming as the
tram went by and food vendors hawking on the streets at night," he said.

The lifestyle in Hanoi is much different now. He
remembers when street vendors sold pho in narrow bowls from two
wooden-barrels.

"Women wore long dresses and puffed up their hair. Hanoians were simple but elegant," he said.

“All of my 1,820 black & white photos have been digitally restored to the best quality”, said Bac.

He is surprised at the huge number of photos he has collected from
enthusiastic Hanoi lovers. For example, he met Pierre Sadoul, the
grandson of Louis Sadoul, a French military doctor. Doctor Sadoul came
to Viet Nam in 1889, 1890 and 1903, and took photos of the city
during each visit.

Pierre Sadoul and his wife presented
Bac with 40 photos taken by the doctor featuring Thang Long Citadel, a
UNESCO world cultural heritage. These photos give viewers a panoramic
view of the citadel before it was destroyed, said Bac's father.

Another rare photo taken by Dr Sadoul is an image of the Statue of
Liberty on top of Turtle Tower in Sword Lake [taken in 1890
according to Louis Sadoul's diary]. Hanoi was home to a copy of the
statue from 1887 to 1945. Measuring 2.85m tall, the statue was erected
by the French colonial government after being sent from France for
an exhibition.

The collection will be displayed on
October 7 at the Hanoi Library. Pierre Sadoul is scheduled to attend the
event. With the theme Ky Uc Hanoi Xua (Memory of Old Hanoi), the
display will be divided into five parts featuring Hanoi from 1831 to
1954. After the display, Bac and his father plan to donate the
collection to the Hanoi Library and the Hanoi Museum ./.

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Exhibition of photos of Hanoi past and present

More than 100 black and white photos by photo-journalists from the
Vietnam News Agency (VNA) chronicling Hanoi from the past until the
present day are on display in Hanoi .

Speaking at the opening ceremony on August 23 for the “Hanoi-the heart
of motherland” exhibition, VNA’s Deputy General Director Nguyen Duc Loi
said the exhibition reflects the capital city’s glorious history during
the country’s struggles for national independence and construction as
well as simple images from days gone past.

He said
that VNA’s staff, along with people the length and breadth of the
nation, are reverently welcoming the 1,000 th anniversary of Thang
Long-Hanoi, which is in October this year.

Apart
from the documentary photos of Hanoi in the past, there are also
images of late President Ho Chi Minh and other state leaders as well as
of the capital city in its struggle for freedom during the US and
French wars and the industrialisation and modernisation process.

The exhibition will last until August 29./.

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