Vietnam
Mitch Epstein's evocative pictures reveal a complex Vietnam that few Americans have ever seen.This is not a document about the war; nor is it the pastoral idyll other photographers have portrayed. Vietnam, through Epstein's eyes, is a sometimes disturbing and sometimes sublime palimpsest.
Vietnam: A Book of Changes interprets a culture and landscape largely cut off from the West for the last thirty years, and now open to a market economy and a new relationship to America. The photographs are suffused with the rawness of Vietnamese life lived on the economic and political edge. Under the layer of friendship lies the tension of politics; under beauty lies violence; under the stark faces of remote villagers is the entrepreneurial momentum drawing them to the city; and under the remnants of war is an artistic bohemia grappling with new freedoms and continued censorship.
Vietnam: A Book of Changes interprets a culture and landscape largely cut off from the West for the last thirty years, and now open to a market economy and a new relationship to America. The photographs are suffused with the rawness of Vietnamese life lived on the economic and political edge. Under the layer of friendship lies the tension of politics; under beauty lies violence; under the stark faces of remote villagers is the entrepreneurial momentum drawing them to the city; and under the remnants of war is an artistic bohemia grappling with new freedoms and continued censorship.
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0393040275
ISBN13:9780393040272
Release Date:November 1996
Publisher:W. W. Norton & Company
Length:23 Pages
Weight:2.65 lbs.
Dimensions:0.9" x 6.9" x 9.1"
Customer Reviews
3 ratings
Beautiful Images
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
With obvious reason that Mr. Epstein is a master in capturing beautiful images in a place when there are few foreign journalists are welcome at that time. Put thing in perspective, how time has changed and a book like this will be viewed as reference.
Wonderful atmosphere
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
The pictures in this book tell a wonderful story of a country in progress and still recovering from years and years of hardship....Epstein caught the soul of vietnam with this wonderful collection of photo's....
a luminous, searching cross-section of Vietnam today
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 28 years ago
Superb. Among the many books of pictures of Vietnam, this one stands out as simply smarter, prettier, more disturbing and deeper than the rest. Epstein works with images like a novelist or composer, stringing them together in long symphonic wavelike movements. The photos--of daily life deep within the country-are beautiful and upsetting at the same time. Almost impossibly, Epstein allows the complicity of the American involvement in Vietnam into the picture frame, and comments subtly, and at the same time, on his own presence as picture taker, while never losing his visual perfect pitch. A must buy for anyone interested in photography, or our legacy in Vietnam
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