5 Questions with Phuong Nguyen Le
Phuong Nguyen Le (b. 2002) is a Vietnamese emerging artist studying in Naarm (Melbourne). Through his photographic practice, he focuses on themes of collective identity, family, sexuality, and decolonisation. This brings Phuong to unpack his positionality in an ongoing colonial structure, one that persists across the Asia-Pacific region through forms of discriminatory violence, censorship, and cultural-political division.
Phuong is currently interested in exploring the occupying space between documentary and art photography with projects that concern his surrounding communities. He hopes to further expand his research and practice in collaboration with emerging Vietnamese and South East Asian art and photography voices.
No.1
When and why did you first pick up a camera? And how did it evolve to become your photography practice now?
Growing up, my family always brought a compact digicam for all of our travels. I was never attached to it; in fact, I was so angsty that I hated taking photos or posing for photos with my family during our trips! It was only until I was 15 that my best friend lent me a real camera—it wasn’t even a fancy one but I thought of it to be, with an interchangeable lens and all—that I got hooked instantly. I guess it was something to do with not having to photograph for anyone else but myself that I felt was really freeing.
Soon after, my dad gave me his old film camera and I started taking photography more seriously. This was Vietnam in 2017, so shooting film was a real commitment, [as there were] limited resources, and film photography was still a tiny niche then. A big revelation for me was [when I was] going through the images I had made during my family trips back to our hometown in Hà Nội over the three years I was in high school. I noticed how differently my family was interacting with each other before and after my great-grandmother’s death in the summer of 2018. I only managed to see this through revisiting my photographs, and that was when I realised the power photographs had over me. This practice of ‘documentary-style’ photography has stuck with me ever since.
No.2
Tell us about Sunshine, your debut monograph. What propelled its creation?
After finishing high school, I decided to take a leap and enrol in an arts degree in Australia. I was looking for a place to stay [that was] within my budget, and a room in Sunshine popped up on Facebook. I didn’t research much about the area, other than googling how far it was from my university. It was only until I arrived that I found out that Sunshine, and Australia as a whole, was very different from what I had initially perceived it to be. Sunshine was so diverse with many different migrant communities, and I started to take photos around the area during my daily commute. At first, I was focusing on the multicultural aspect of Sunshine, as many people in Vietnam still think of Australia to be a very euro-centric place. It was one year into the project that I realised my photographs had a lot more to say about the Vietnamese community in Australia, especially my positionality as a Vietnam national educating myself about the history of Vietnamese refugees. Working with the Vietnamese community in Sunshine and the surrounding suburbs was my way of learning more about the post-war impact that led to the division between communities in Vietnam—especially so considering that the Vietnamese perspective is consistently ignored from the US dominant narrative. As Viet Thanh Nguyen argues, ‘how America remembers this war and memory is to some extent how the world remembers it’.
In 2023, I was really fortunate to receive the Objectifs Documentary Award and the Tall Poppy Press Runner-up Publishing Prize for the project. The former gave me an opportunity to develop my work with my mentor Ng Swan Ti, director of PannaFoto Institute in Indonesia, who has plenty of knowledge on community collaboration and storytelling from a Southeast Asian perspective. The latter enabled me to work with Tall Poppy Press, a local publisher who focuses on contemporary Australian photography, to produce the project as a publication. During the process, I also collaborated with Vanessa Le on the design of the book. Vanessa shared stories about her Vietnamese family with me, and we engaged in many discussions regarding the project. Making a book has been a big dream of mine, and I am really proud to have this work as my debut monograph. It has managed to travel back to Vietnam and reach audiences there, as well as foster meaningful connections between me and many Viets in Australia.
No.3
You launched the book in a fairly unique venue (at least, as far as book launches go), at Anh & Em Restaurant in the suburb of Sunshine. Why did you choose to launch it there?
In early 2024, I was commissioned by the city council to display the work as a projection in the centre of Sunshine. That location is coincidentally right next to Anh & Em, the first restaurant I did a trial shift at when I first arrived in Australia! So I instantly knew that I had to replicate that setting for the book launch, as a nice full circle moment. In the end, what I thought about the most was that I really wanted to celebrate the book with my favourite people, so what better than sharing a meal with them? I was pleasantly surprised to see new friends coming to the launch, as many people came because they heard about it through social media or word of mouth. It was one of the best nights of my life—we managed to fill up all the seats in the restaurant and everyone left with a full belly. What more can I ask for?
No.4
How do you think photography can transform a story into a window that many don’t know exist or even think about looking through, particularly within the context of decolonisation and sexuality?
Growing up queer in a family with a long lineage of military men and athletes in Vietnam, a lot of the things I did for self-expression was really secretive. Photography was the first thing that offered me that privacy—making photographs on film was my own way of figuring my shit out since no one could really look into them other than myself. Because of this, I initially adopted a lone wolf approach to making art, [and it wasn’t] until I discovered the exhibition Museum of Heartbreaks—an initiative to raise awareness on the stigma around AIDS in the context of queerness in Vietnam—that I felt that there is a special magic in sharing your arts with others. In the time when division is so rampant and well-documented, I am deeply compelled to explore how photographs can bring us closer to each other.
Vietnamese-Canadian scholar Thy Phu’s book Warring Visions is another major influence on my practice. Phu looks at vernacular photographs of family snapshots, picturesque images of landscape, and tourism photography made by Vietnamese people during wartime, and argues that they represent the war just as truthfully as traditional war photojournalism does. I think of the impact from the US invasion in Indochina to be ongoing: considering the long-term effects of Agent Orange, how the war is remembered globally due to western-controlled media, as well as current US political and economical intervention in the South China Sea dispute. This is why I still look at the photographs I am making with the same ‘warring visions’.
No.5
Who are some photographers you admire and who work with a similar body politic?
Mai Nguyên Anh jumps straight to mind. His series Gửi anh Tuyền (63 Years) is especially meaningful to me as it challenges the North vs South rhetoric and opens up the artist’s personal family history to start a dialogue towards reconciliation. Hmong-American artist Pao Houa Her is another incredible artist who uses storytelling and mythology to explore Hmong identity and the blind spot(s) in US official history, in particular the enlistment of Hmong soldiers to fight the brutal American war.
Currently, I am obsessed with the works of Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai. I absolutely admire her community-focused approach, as well as her engagement with Vietnamese migrants in Cambodia, a much ignored topic within contemporary social discourses in Vietnam. And I have to mention my dear friends, Adrian Jing Song and Aishah Kenton, whose works speak about Asian family dynamics in very intimate and inspiring ways. I adore their visual language and process-driven methods in addressing what remains unsaid.
Find out more
The debut monograph from Lê Nguyên Phương, Sunshine uses the western Melbourne suburb of the same name as a geographic anchor point to examine the lingering post-war trauma and resettlement in Australia among Vietnamese migrants after the American War.
Get it from Tall Poppy Press here.