Timeless Vietnam - Hardcover

Canh Tang

3.6

5 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1933176407 ISBN 13: 9781933176406

Publisher: Red Rock Press, 2012

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In this book you will find a new perspective on Vietnam as a place unaffected by strife and undiminished by modernism. The enduring acts of farming, fishing, trades and culture of this remarkable land come alive through its pages, providing insight into the core of the nation and the values of its people.

Timeless Vietnam, Canh Tang's first book of photography, is a dazzling glimpse of an ancient culture that persists today much as it has for thousands of years. The motion and energy of life emanate from each shot. Colors interplay with form in photos of the silhouettes of fishermen on the shore against a pulsating sunrise. Detail meets simplicity in shots of skilled artisans chiseling intricate sculptures.

Complementing these extraordinary photos are translations of historic Vietnamese poetry that contextualize a land that has resisted imperial domination for thousands of years, forever retaining its unique character. The resilience and beauty of Vietnam and its peoples radiate through memory and serve as a testimony to what will survive.

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About the Author:

Canh Tang was born in the province of Hue, Vietnam where he still lives.

Review:

This collection of nearly 100 photographs shot in present-day Vietnam aims to look past the grisly wars of the last century by focusing on the unchanged daily lives of rice farmers reaping the fields, fishermen casting nets on the water, artisans in workshops, and others, stressing how deeply rooted these lives are in a cultural heritage undiminished by strife or modernism. In the foreword, folk musician Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary) calls the photos celebrations of the beauty and the spirit that have nurtured and sustained the people of Vietnam in times of painful struggle, in times of peace. Divided into chapters on farming, fishing, craftsmanship, and spirituality, the book s images include three generations of basket weavers working shoulder to shoulder; children with nets, laughing knee-deep in the Perfume River; and a craftsman chiseling an ornate dragon god head. Despite some of their postcard affectations, the photos attest to a collective spirit hinged on the same work and traditions that have been honored for centuries a point that is brought home with analogous Vietnamese poems, some dating back hundreds of years. Although disproportionately limited to the north central coast region, and, at times, beset with dry, unenlightening compositions, this first collection by Tang is, nonetheless, an admirable effort to reorient perceptions of an exquisite, resilient country. Photos. (Dec.) --Publishers Weekly

Canh Tang has captured qualities of this timeless, exotic Asian land that have eluded other photographers. This Red Rock Press collection will amaze and excite you. --Jan C. Scruggs, founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Timeless Vietnam captures the essence, resilience and beauty of a country that has endured so much violence, ideological as well as physical. It is no requiem, however, but a testimony to what will survive. --Linn Dinh is a translator and poet whose new work, Love Like Hate, is a novel of contemporary Vietnam.

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