This series of photographs was developed in the Mekong Delta area and constitutes a collaborative effort between the photographer and these young women. While working on this island, Tan Loc, my initial misconception of international marriage changed: young women and family were quite well informed by difficulties of the international marriage, however, they chose to leave their home country for better life opportunities and for supporting their family left behind in Vietnam.
Instead of focusing on the hardships that push these young women to seek expatriation, the project aims at emphasizing the beauty of what they intend to leave behind, which includes their environment, the landscapes, their family, their friends, in other words, people and places with which with they have grown up and which form part of their identity. What is left behind is the known and where they head constitutes the unknown, places where everything will be different, from the climate and landscapes to the language, culture, and people.
Biography
Oh Soon-Hwa is a photographer, curator, and lecturer. She holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts and a doctorate degree (EdD) from Columbia University in New York. She has participated near 70 exhibitions internationally, to name a few, the Private Museum in Singapore, the Noorderlicht Photo Festival in the Netherlands, the Lucca Photo Festival in Italy, the Pingyao International Photo Festival in China, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham, the Houston FotoFest, the Pochon biennale, the Ssamzi Art Space in Korea, the Asian American Art Center, the Society for Contemporary Photography, the Korean Cultural Centre in Los Angeles, the Palm Spring Desert Museum, and the Sotheby’s Young International Art Program.
Her curatorial works include exhibitions at the National Museum of Singapore, the Jeonju International Photography Festival and the Pingyao International Photography Festival. She is a recipient of Ohio Arts Council Fellowship, Korea Arts Council Fellowship, Aaron Siskind Memorial Scholarship and UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries. She is a member of several academic associations and an editorial board member & reviewer for the Photographies Journal, Routledge, UK. Her teaching courses include Contemporary Issues in Photography, Documentary Projects, Narrative Portraits, Traditional wet darkroom as well as Digital darkroom. Currently, she is an associate professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.