A woman in Sa Pa. (Photo: by Réhahn) Hoi An (VNA) - Renowned French photographer Réhahn is displaying hiscollection, Precious Heritage, in a free outdoor exhibition in the ancientcoastal city of Hoi An through this summer.
The photographer has been living in Hoi An over the past six years.
The exhibition began on July 1 and will run for two months at Nguyen Phuc Chu streeton An Hoi island.
Through a selection of 40 photographs, echoing his museum, Réhahn shows howrich and diverse Vietnam’s ethnic culture is. His famous portraits of youngchildren and old women from all provinces across the country represent fromlarge ethnic communities with hundreds of thousands of members to small onesthat have just a few hundreds, such as the O Du group, which required him towait for three years to get authorisation to visit them in their remotevillages.
Posing in their traditional costumes, they symbolise ancestral customs that arepassed on from one generation to another, the challenge of protecting them, andthe hope of keeping these communities alive.
The Precious Heritage collection promotes the beauty and pride ofthese communities that together form the great mosaic of Vietnam’snationalities.
Réhahn believes that the “most efficient way to preserve the ethnic culture ofthe ethnic groups is to promote them outside their community, to create a senseof pride for their heritage and ancient customs. Sometimes, you need someoneelse’s vision to make you realise what you have”.
That, he says, is what motivated him to establish the Precious Heritage ArtGallery Museum (located at 26 Phan Boi Chau street in Hoi An) in January thisyear. By charging no entry fee and displaying everything with text inVietnamese, English and French, the photographer hopes that the maximum numberof people will use the opportunity to explore this side of Vietnam’s identity,and see what’s beyond the more obvious images.-VNA
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