As You Grow Older

A collective portrait that investigates the Vietnamese aesthetics through the body, domestic environment, and various settings of the mundane. As You Grow Older is created from either chance encounters, or obsessively searched for; an oeuvre to seek for a sort of kinetic likeness and visuality through one’s own connectivity with the community, unassuming and without pretense.

Conceived from the need to see and construct images that are both self-referential and anthropologically rich, “As You Grow Older” engages with documentary traditions, while weaving in theatrical elements. Through this duo space reverence could be claimed to the people and the unseeable forces surrounding. Reality is heightened in each image, with dreamlike feelings and colors, creating an air of eminence and regality for an image that one sees so regularly, everyday.

Working closely with the protagonists of each image, who generally are from every walk of life, on setting, lighting, and poses to create candor depictions of the Vietnamese ideology and values. They are shown in intimate, staged portraits, interacting in both public and private spaces, embellished and embraced with mundane objects and the landscapes that they inhabit. In this moment, they reign supreme. The multilayered portrayals create an air of mystifying banality, proposing an utopian realm of beauty, desire and belonging that is both sensuous and complex beyond just the surface.

Even with pictures where the body is not present, evidence of life is still palpable. An empty lounge chair becomes an invitation, the slight touch between the real and artificial flora, all draped in thick layers of otherness; ambiguous visual clues create unavoidable confrontation in the midst of explicit intimacy.