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A woman walks along the rice fields in Ha Tay province, Vietnam. In the book, ``Vietnam Moment,'' the photo is accompanied with a Vietnamese folk poem: `What a hard life I lead. Morning to the rice field, afternoon to the mulberry field. No time to comb my hair, nor chew betel.'' / Courtesy of Seoul Selection |
By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
When Brenda Paik Sunoo arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2002, bicycles and motorbikes dominated the streets and there was only one ATM machine in the entire city. More than six years later, Paik has left the city, drastically changed by the country's rapid economic development.
But before leaving Hanoi last week, she released ``Vietnam Moment,'' a book featuring 113 photographs accompanied by traditional Vietnamese proverbs, poem or song lines selected by co-author and friend Ton Thi Thu Nguyet.
``In a way, it's a time capsule of images I've taken from 2002 to 2008. When we arrived, it was raining, all chaos, and a lot of traffic. There was only one ATM. Now, there are many foreign banks and ATMs. I can go around the city and know what's changed,'' Paik told The Korea Times at a book cafe in downtown Seoul.
Paik is a third generation Korean-American who grew up in California. In 2002, she moved to Hanoi with her husband, Jan, who was on assignment for the International Labor Organization. It was a welcome change for Paik, who was still coping with the loss of her 16-year-old son, Tommy, who suddenly died of a heart attack a few years ago.
``By the time we came (to Hanoi), our son had been gone for 8 years. I felt stronger and prepared to jump back into life. … Vietnam was the perfect place to do that because it was all about change. We were witnesses to Vietnam's rapid change, and it matched us,'' she said.
Paik found herself captivated by Vietnam. Even though she was a journalist by profession (she worked at The Korea Times in Los Angeles for a few years), she did not want to write ``because (she) didn't know what to say.'' So she turned to photography, and over the next six years, took thousands of photographs around Vietnam.
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Brenda Paik Sunoo and Ton Thi Thu Nguyet, authors of Vietnam Moment
/ Courtesy of Seoul Selection |
She began taking Vietnamese language lessons from Nguyet, an English teacher at Vietnam National University. They quickly became friends, and Nguyet translated Paik's memoir on loss and healing, ``Seaweed and Shamans: Inheriting the Gifts of Grief,'' in to Vietnamese.
Paik wanted to do something to promote friendship between the United States, Korea and Vietnam, whose histories are intertwined. She asked Nguyet to collaborate on a book that would contain images of a fast-changing Vietnam, accompanied with Vietnamese proverbs and poetry.
``I wanted to demonstrate that two people from two different cultures, who could have been enemies at one point in time, could cross the cultural divide, move beyond it and create something beautiful in the process. … (In the book) I wanted to show how the Vietnamese can still find their moments of quiet, solitude and beauty in the midst of the country moving very fast. That's what Nguyet and I, we are both grandmothers, hope to pass this on as our cultural legacy to young people,'' she said.
Paik wanted ``Vietnam Moment'' to show a different side of Vietnam and its people, who are navigating the transition from a traditional to modern society. She chose photographs that would fit into six themes such as ``Femininity and Solitude,'' ``Work'' and ``Simple Pleasures.''
She then asked Nguyet and other friends to collect Vietnamese proverbs, song and lines of poetry to match the photos. The trickiest part was translating the words from Vietnamese to English and later, Korean.
But the hard work paid off. ``The book looks very simple and beautiful but the process was intensive and vigorous. My thesis was, `can a foreigner's visual impressions of Vietnam today come close to resonating with a traditional Vietnamese poem or song?' I'm happy to say that it can. If there's any lesson of hope, when people from different cultures venture to work together and do it with respect and dignity and you can create beautiful things together,'' Paik said.
Interestingly, in the 1970s, she participated in peace demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the U.S. ``For me, as a peace activist, to come to Vietnam to help build friendships, it was like going full circle. It's been a wonderful experience,'' she said.
``Vietnam Moment: Examining Vietnam's Traditions and Present Through Photographs and Poetry'' (19,000 won) is published in Korea by Seoul Selection and is available at www.seoulselection.com.
cathy@koreatimes.co.kr |
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yistory@koreatimes.co.kr
