THE LUMINESCENCE OF MEMORY: PHOTOGRAPHER BINH DANH

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

“The landscape is what defines me. When I am somewhere new or familiar, I am constantly in dialogue with the past, present, and my future self. When I am thinking about landscape, I am thinking about those who had stood on this land before me. Whoever they are, hopefully, history recorded their markings on the land for us to study and contemplate” — Binh Danh, Vietnam-born American photographer

Born in a South Vietnamese village during the Vietnam War, Binh Danh has an MFA from Stanford and teaches at San Jose State University.

Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. In the wake of the Communist takeover, his family — mother, father, older brother, two older sisters, and assorted relatives on his mother’s side — fled Vietnam for a Malaysian refugee camp on the island of Pulau Bidong. There they stayed for nine months, a period of which Danh, a baby at the time, has little memory.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.