AFTERWARds (NO NAPALM)

Inspired by the work of Hong Kong based artist Ma Yujiang who Photoshops military harware out of found war photographs, this project challenges the photojournalistic and archival representation of people who have been photographically caught in the global narratives and public exhumations of war.

Applying emergent Ai image scrubbing and animation technologies, this process mines open source photographs of the War in Vietnam to remove and withhold photographed bodies that become perpetually redistrubuted, redigested and recirculated even more than 50 years since the ending of war. These people remain caught in the imagery of war.

These fictive empty landscapes speak of both loss and distance; of the absences and dissapearances that continue to haunt and linger amongst the rapid economic development and afterwar revitalisation of these once devastated sites. In Vietnamese culture, photographs and paintings of ancestors are treated with the respect and care as if they were present and still continuing to shape in our daily lives. Here, these photographs of landscapes become almost like the representations of our ancestors. These landscapes, now subject to subdivisions, redevelopment and revitalisation may have become unrecognisable, but remain alive in the diasporic collective memory of home.

Source images:

1)        Horst Fass, ‘Sun Breaks Through Dense Jungle,’ Binh Gia (Associated Press), 1965.

2)        Art Greenspon, ‘First Sergeant of A Company, 101st Airborne Division,’ Hue (Associated Press),1968.

3)        Horst Fass, ‘Women and Children Crouch in a Muddy Canal,’ Bao Trai (Associated Press), 1966.

4)        Kyōichi Sawada, ‘Flee to Safety,’ Quy Nhon (World Press Photo), 1965.

5)        Đặng Văn Phước,  ‘Soldiers helping a Civilian From Her Village to a Refugee Camp,’ (Associated Press), 1968.

6)        Bettman Archives, ‘United States Paratroopers,’ Bien Hoa (Getty images), 1965.

7)        Huỳnh Công (Nick) Út, ‘Grandmother Carrying Her burned Grandson,’ Trang Bang (Associated Press), 1972.

8)        Huỳnh Công (Nick) Út, ‘Napalm Girl,’ Trang Bang (Associated Press), 1972.

9)        Malcolm Browne, ‘Thích Quảng Đức immolation,’ Saigon (Associted Press), 1963.

10)  Eddie Adams, ‘South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, executes suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém,’ Saigon (Associated Press), 1968. 

11)  Hubert Van Es, ‘Helicopter Evacuation,’ Saigon, (Getty Images), 1975.

(facilitated with the contribution of OpenArt Ai engines and its associated climate ans socioeconomic impacts)