Vietnam’s disappearing tribes: French photographer documents a way of life that is dying out

In taking photographs of local village cultures, a French Photographer named Réhahn is undertaking a project of preserving Vietnamese culture along his own terms. This has intersections with Benedict Anderson’s 1996 piece Imagined Communities “Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism” in which he critiques the colonialist attempt to become “the guardian of a generalized, but also local, Tradition” (Anderson, p.181). “Tribal elders … have handed over rare artefacts and garments for display and preservation at his gallery”. There are also associated problems in that artefacts of historical beauty can become cheaply caricatured to achieve “national identity” as in the case of the Borobudur in state propaganda (Anderson, p.184). The perspective created in Réhahn’s museums will be important in recreating Vietnamese heritage for its preservation.  

Réhahn’s Western gaze has the potential to obscure Vietnamese culture identity, as seen in his photographs of “An Phuoc a seven-year-old girl from the Cham community … her incredible blue eyes … make her notably different from others in her community”. Réhahn then goes on to photograph her to a large extent, forgetting that blue eyes are a highly Western trait and the girl is an anomaly to the society. In highlighting her difference and uniqueness for possessing blue eyes – a Western trait -  Réhahn unconsciously makes a statement that reinforces Western traits as important to photograph.

The narrative of help to the Vietnamese villages that Réhahn raises is that his photography “shows tribal people the interest that people around the world can have in their culture”. Here he is giving an imperative for the village to open themselves to the outside world. By saying that this “interest … gives them a sense of pride”, Réhahn is dictating that the tribe should benefit from his photography by gaining individual and tribal pride at joining the world narrative and receiving scrutiny from the world’s eyes. However, for Réhahn’s “480,000 followers on Facebook”, the stories are being told from his French, professional photographer perspective. His skill may result in the influx of tourism that will disrupt the Vietnamese villages and hasten the removal of village culture by encouraging gentrification. This is part of a larger narrative that creates Vietnamese village culture as a commodity for the global audience on Facebook to consume. If tourists bring this commodity consumption mindset to their travels in Vietnam, the village people will suffer the result of being objectified.

As a final technical critique, photography as a medium can only cover slivers of lived experience, there is no audio allowed, for example. This creates problems for individual representation of the people as photography is entirely about the photographer’s unique perspective and view. Without a space for the representation of their voices, Réhahn’s aim of preserving culture will remain incomplete. Thus working with local Vietnamese village writings would be very helpful when placed alongside their traditional items.