Ha Huy Anh Pham
Daria Oprean
Pham:
"I'm from Hanoi, Vietnam and I'm currently studying political science in Frankfurt, Germany. I'm really glad I was recommended for this project. Even though I'm from Vietnam, half of my life was spent in German speaking countries, so my social, political and artistic perspective might have been altered quite a bit. Though oftentimes I have trouble expressing myself in vietnamese, I still feel like Vietnam is where my core identity comes from. For me photography is a way to compensate for the lack of fluency in my Vietnamese. I was introduced to photography by my older brother, who's currently working as a journalist. Other than that, I've not had any exposure to art and photography, so I'm excited to be able to explore more with your help. I'm interested to see how our cultures and values differ as well. Here, like in Romania, we place great importance on our family, but also on reputation, like how others perceive us and our children. In my opinion, we're still largely influenced by our rice farming culture, which means working very hard and long hours when the harvest is due, but taking long breaks and only doing informal work to earn some extra money when the harvesting season is over. This translates into exhausting ourselves when the times are difficult and slacking off otherwise. Again, this is just my personal view and might not apply to everyone in our country, so please take this with a grain of salt!
The covid has hit me hard, both in terms of mentally and artistically. I have lost almost all my enthusiasm for taking photos, and the lockdowns and coldness also didn't help. But on the bright side I just travelled back to my home country so I'm happy to be able to resume my artistic endeavors.
I think I might just stop here before the letter becomes an autobiography."
"I'm from Hanoi, Vietnam and I'm currently studying political science in Frankfurt, Germany. I'm really glad I was recommended for this project. Even though I'm from Vietnam, half of my life was spent in German speaking countries, so my social, political and artistic perspective might have been altered quite a bit. Though oftentimes I have trouble expressing myself in vietnamese, I still feel like Vietnam is where my core identity comes from. For me photography is a way to compensate for the lack of fluency in my Vietnamese. I was introduced to photography by my older brother, who's currently working as a journalist. Other than that, I've not had any exposure to art and photography, so I'm excited to be able to explore more with your help. I'm interested to see how our cultures and values differ as well. Here, like in Romania, we place great importance on our family, but also on reputation, like how others perceive us and our children. In my opinion, we're still largely influenced by our rice farming culture, which means working very hard and long hours when the harvest is due, but taking long breaks and only doing informal work to earn some extra money when the harvesting season is over. This translates into exhausting ourselves when the times are difficult and slacking off otherwise. Again, this is just my personal view and might not apply to everyone in our country, so please take this with a grain of salt!
The covid has hit me hard, both in terms of mentally and artistically. I have lost almost all my enthusiasm for taking photos, and the lockdowns and coldness also didn't help. But on the bright side I just travelled back to my home country so I'm happy to be able to resume my artistic endeavors.
I think I might just stop here before the letter becomes an autobiography."
"This is right after we arrived in Germany. They wanted to visit me and prepare me mentally before I study there (weird how much vietnamese parents care for their grown up kid, I know). We had to rent a small apartment during our stay there. Since we were essentially tourists on foreign soil, we had nothing beside some clothes we brought with us. Nevertheless, the table, where we often gather for dinner, where my father checks his emails and where my mother plays games on her iPad, is always crowded, both with stuff and people. It's also where the only light in the room shines on. It's as if despite the distance from home, we can still feel at home just by sitting at the table together, feeling each other's warmth and minding our own business."
Daria:
"My name is Daria, I'm a student from Romania, studying Photography in Belgium.
I've moved and travelled quite a few in my life, observing and comparing different political, social and artistic environments in all the places that I've been, which I can say can sparked up my need of knowing more, of exploring cultures, and therefore, exploring myself.
I mainly use photography as a way to understand the world, to answer questions that I may have and to explore the emotions and questions other people that I photograph may have, but we will explore our views more in the following weeks.
I'm curious to see how are values and perception of life is different based on our context. In my case, there is a lot of importance put on health and family from the moment we are born, but most importantly on work. That work makes you a decent human being, that work gains you respect and care in society as a whole (as a post-communist syndrome that we still haven't eradicated).
The way I see this, is by us having little debate sessions over these weeks, maybe even facetiming each other (it seems more personal and easier), and hopefully getting to know each other and maybe even question ourselves in the meantime."
"My name is Daria, I'm a student from Romania, studying Photography in Belgium.
I've moved and travelled quite a few in my life, observing and comparing different political, social and artistic environments in all the places that I've been, which I can say can sparked up my need of knowing more, of exploring cultures, and therefore, exploring myself.
I mainly use photography as a way to understand the world, to answer questions that I may have and to explore the emotions and questions other people that I photograph may have, but we will explore our views more in the following weeks.
I'm curious to see how are values and perception of life is different based on our context. In my case, there is a lot of importance put on health and family from the moment we are born, but most importantly on work. That work makes you a decent human being, that work gains you respect and care in society as a whole (as a post-communist syndrome that we still haven't eradicated).
The way I see this, is by us having little debate sessions over these weeks, maybe even facetiming each other (it seems more personal and easier), and hopefully getting to know each other and maybe even question ourselves in the meantime."
"I did enjoy Vietnam a lot, the people mostly and how open they are, and to be honest it made me feel close to home in a way. We have a saying in Romania that "you should give the last piece of bread in your home to a stranger", meaning be open and welcoming to all, which is also the impression I got while I was there. The language barrier was not an issue, people found ways to communicate in other ways. However, I cannot be completely biased, as I can also think that this could have been due to our privilege as white Europeans.
I also grew up in the german-influenced part of Romania, the north of Transylvania, which was colonized by Saxons in the XII century to guard the Hungarian boarder, which influenced the country's dynamic quite a bit. Both of my parents speak german, I went to german speaking kindergarden, and most of my friends did their whole school courses in german to this day.
How do you feel German values compare to you mother ones? What was your experience as an immigrant? Was it easier for you to integrate due to your background of migration in german speaking countries already? And if so, do you feel that you had an advantage in your process of integration throughout?
For example, I lived in Norway for three years, from the age of 8 to 11, when I learnt English very well, I saw a completly different educational system, that upon my arrival back to Romania, opened up my eyes to the "old" (post-communist) ways our country was handling things from a very young age. So when I decided to come to the west again, I was faced with these remarks of "Your english is so good for a Romanian",or " you don't look romanian", or "what kind of job do you have", not even questioning the fact that I could be a student. However, my lack of "romanianess" (so to speak), helped me integrate and adapt much easier than others. Did you experience the same in Germany?
I'm glad that you brought up the question of mother tongues, and our drift from our culture. For Christmas this year, I went back to Romania and I realized I cannot communicate as well in my mother tongue as I used to. I forgot expressions and words, and I found myself speaking in English more. To be honest, due to the nationalist feeling we were all suffocated with as young children, I felt an enormous sense of guilt and embarrassment to the fact that I could not speak my mother tongue, and I felt judged for it from my family. I feel like due to the fact that both of us have lived and experienced other cultures maybe from a younger age, we lost a small sense of out identity in the sense of where we come from. and like you said, with the idea of "reputation" and "representation" that we hold in the west, it can hurt our idea of our "own identity", which is something that should be fluid and changing always. However, my guilt did make me pick up some books in Romanian to exercise my vocabulary again.
I actually studied Social Culture in the Netherlands for a year first, which I loved because it was based on research and I have always been fascinated with the way we behave in social settings, how that is different to online communication, and what drives us to act the way we do. If I could sit, watch, and analyze strangers on the street or in social groups for the rest of my life I would gladly do it. However I also think that my interest in the social conduct or instincts of humans comes from the fact that I could never be part of a social group, due to the fact that I moved so many times in my life. It did make me adapt easier, but I never really found my place or "my people" like everyone has. Is that something you've experienced as well or how did "being on the go" affect you? After One year, I decided that I still was not touching my creative side as much as I wanted to, and that I could apply my research side more to photography, than i could apply my creative side to social analytics. However, photography is still a way in which I try to analyze the world and try to understand it. All my work is based around emotions and humans, and my projects always start off with a question that is consistent in my artistic process, that I get the answer to after the finished result. It's kind of like how mental patients are made to journal or draw, to reflect on that and understand their own emotions.
Corona and quarantine affected me quite a lot. The first lockdown I was very productive, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I used it to my advantage, however the second lockdown is harder. I didn't have any motivation to photograph anymore, I started questioning what the hell I'm going to do with photography in the world right now, I felt that I didn't or wasn't going to contribute to society in any type of way, and it will be just this ego-driven process ending in a result that who will actually give a fuck about while people are dying, starving, and just barely getting by? So there was a lot of self-doubt on my end. Again, coming from a place where "honorable jobs" are seen as doctors and social workers and whatnot, being an artist just made me feel like I was sitting in my little bubble, while the world was going to shit around me. I'm still trying to find a reason for what artists actually bring to the world or what our goal is. Is it to see your work exhibited? Is it to get validation on the way you see the world ? Is it to be known and seen? Is it merely just an individual instrument to understand the world and our contexts? Throughout history we've seen what photography meant and how it was used, whether it was scientific evolution, photographing evidence, or capturing moments and memories. But these are all ways that help other domains and evolve different aspects of the world. What is photography as an art form in itself? Personally, I cannot stay in my little bubble doing my little projects, closing an eye to the big questions that photography imposes. Especially in a world like today, where we travel solely to take pictures, where we have phones that shoot RAW format, and where we are being bombarded with photographic information from corporations and businesses that are screaming at us to buy, consume, and then buy some more. This also raises the question of how photography is defined by technology, and who can call themselves a photographer and who cannot."
I also grew up in the german-influenced part of Romania, the north of Transylvania, which was colonized by Saxons in the XII century to guard the Hungarian boarder, which influenced the country's dynamic quite a bit. Both of my parents speak german, I went to german speaking kindergarden, and most of my friends did their whole school courses in german to this day.
How do you feel German values compare to you mother ones? What was your experience as an immigrant? Was it easier for you to integrate due to your background of migration in german speaking countries already? And if so, do you feel that you had an advantage in your process of integration throughout?
For example, I lived in Norway for three years, from the age of 8 to 11, when I learnt English very well, I saw a completly different educational system, that upon my arrival back to Romania, opened up my eyes to the "old" (post-communist) ways our country was handling things from a very young age. So when I decided to come to the west again, I was faced with these remarks of "Your english is so good for a Romanian",or " you don't look romanian", or "what kind of job do you have", not even questioning the fact that I could be a student. However, my lack of "romanianess" (so to speak), helped me integrate and adapt much easier than others. Did you experience the same in Germany?
I'm glad that you brought up the question of mother tongues, and our drift from our culture. For Christmas this year, I went back to Romania and I realized I cannot communicate as well in my mother tongue as I used to. I forgot expressions and words, and I found myself speaking in English more. To be honest, due to the nationalist feeling we were all suffocated with as young children, I felt an enormous sense of guilt and embarrassment to the fact that I could not speak my mother tongue, and I felt judged for it from my family. I feel like due to the fact that both of us have lived and experienced other cultures maybe from a younger age, we lost a small sense of out identity in the sense of where we come from. and like you said, with the idea of "reputation" and "representation" that we hold in the west, it can hurt our idea of our "own identity", which is something that should be fluid and changing always. However, my guilt did make me pick up some books in Romanian to exercise my vocabulary again.
I actually studied Social Culture in the Netherlands for a year first, which I loved because it was based on research and I have always been fascinated with the way we behave in social settings, how that is different to online communication, and what drives us to act the way we do. If I could sit, watch, and analyze strangers on the street or in social groups for the rest of my life I would gladly do it. However I also think that my interest in the social conduct or instincts of humans comes from the fact that I could never be part of a social group, due to the fact that I moved so many times in my life. It did make me adapt easier, but I never really found my place or "my people" like everyone has. Is that something you've experienced as well or how did "being on the go" affect you? After One year, I decided that I still was not touching my creative side as much as I wanted to, and that I could apply my research side more to photography, than i could apply my creative side to social analytics. However, photography is still a way in which I try to analyze the world and try to understand it. All my work is based around emotions and humans, and my projects always start off with a question that is consistent in my artistic process, that I get the answer to after the finished result. It's kind of like how mental patients are made to journal or draw, to reflect on that and understand their own emotions.
Corona and quarantine affected me quite a lot. The first lockdown I was very productive, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I used it to my advantage, however the second lockdown is harder. I didn't have any motivation to photograph anymore, I started questioning what the hell I'm going to do with photography in the world right now, I felt that I didn't or wasn't going to contribute to society in any type of way, and it will be just this ego-driven process ending in a result that who will actually give a fuck about while people are dying, starving, and just barely getting by? So there was a lot of self-doubt on my end. Again, coming from a place where "honorable jobs" are seen as doctors and social workers and whatnot, being an artist just made me feel like I was sitting in my little bubble, while the world was going to shit around me. I'm still trying to find a reason for what artists actually bring to the world or what our goal is. Is it to see your work exhibited? Is it to get validation on the way you see the world ? Is it to be known and seen? Is it merely just an individual instrument to understand the world and our contexts? Throughout history we've seen what photography meant and how it was used, whether it was scientific evolution, photographing evidence, or capturing moments and memories. But these are all ways that help other domains and evolve different aspects of the world. What is photography as an art form in itself? Personally, I cannot stay in my little bubble doing my little projects, closing an eye to the big questions that photography imposes. Especially in a world like today, where we travel solely to take pictures, where we have phones that shoot RAW format, and where we are being bombarded with photographic information from corporations and businesses that are screaming at us to buy, consume, and then buy some more. This also raises the question of how photography is defined by technology, and who can call themselves a photographer and who cannot."