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Binh Danh

Bio

Binh Danh was born in Vietnam on October 9, 1977. Having recently received his BFA in Photography from San Jose State University, he has exhibited his work regionally and has lectured on his work nationally. Danh’s work often addresses and reflects his Vietnamese heritage and interest in natural science and history. He utilizes 19 century photographic processes such as daguerreotypes and tintypes in his contemporary image-making. Other projects completed by Danh focus on the Vietnamese-American War and the subsequent emigration of many Vietnamese (Danh & his family included) to the United States.

Danh invented an amazing photographic technique, in which he grows an image in plant leaves through a photosynthesis process. The leaves themselves become a Chlorophyll Print. This innovative process was used to create the Chlorophyll Prints for Searching for the Cosmos and Immortality, the Remnants of the Vietnamese-American War. Danh is currently an MFA candidate at Stanford University.

Danh wrote “In my work, the art is used as a vessel to embark on a journey of exploration, discovery, and education. The histories I search for are the hidden stories of Vietnamese American experiences. The sciences are the processes in my work, both historical and contemporary photographic methods, and also techniques that I invent on this path of self-actualization. These processes are important to the content and aesthetic issues of the work. In my search, I collect, preserve, and evaluate biological specimens and historical artifacts, both real and metaphorical. My goals are to weave these findings into the larger society and explore the shared commonality among people of the United States in making multicultural history.”

Artist'sStatement

Immortality: The Remnants of the Vietnam and American War

“I remember that night quite well,” my mother said. “It was one of those peaceful nights. I remember the familiar smell of ducks roasting on a nearby stove. The humid air evaporating into a translucent mist all around me. The war was still going on and at that time, I was pregnant with your brother. We heard the bombs dropping throughout the village. I screamed, ‘Let’s go. Let’s go!’ Grandmother in one hand and your sisters in the other, we all ran down to the basement. It was that sound, the warning that war is nearby, the fighting, the flying ammo, the death.

We hid in the basement until the fighting ended. It was quiet. How strange that the village was full of life just a minute ago, but now it is a ghost town, as every house is abandoned. Civilians hid in the earth from lines of fire. We heard shootings and then stillness. The stillness lasted for a while. Then people started to scream, ‘Fire! Fire!’ I carried your sisters up the stairs and grandmother followed behind. We ran outside hoping that our house was not on fire. ‘My heaven and earth, the neighbor’s house is on fire!’ People ran with buckets of water, splashing the water onto the house. But it was too late. The fire had burned it down. The family was nowhere to be seen. The next day, the villagers found the family in the basement. Mother, father, and four children all burnt up. Some of the villagers tried to separate their bodies, but it was impossible, the fire had bonded them together. It seemed that a bullet ricocheted, causing the fire. The undertaker had to build a square casket to fit them all in. That day the whole village, marching to Buddhist chants and bells, went down to the rice paddies and buried them.” My mother was sad as she told this story; she said “It was life in Vietnam at that time. War is death.”

In this infamous war, “The Americans would detonate the equivalent of 200 pounds of dynamite for every person living on the Southeast Asian subcontinent, dropping more bombs than were used by all sides in World War II. They would crater the earth with millions of artillery shells and mor-tars, and drop more than 3 million tons of conventional bombs from aircraft. They would spray the landscape with more than 11 million gal-lons of chemical defoliants that melted away nearly a million acres of obscuring jungle. They would drop ‘pineapple’ cluster bombs by the hundred thousand, bombs which, at explo-sion, rammed thousands of steel fragments into any flesh available. They would implant hundreds of thousands of land mines, throw thousands of hand grenades, and fire endless numbers of bullets, of which, 100,000 were expected for every North Viet-namese soldier killed.”*

In this body of work, I have recorded the images of the Vietnam War onto and into tropical plants. One summer, I was motivated to experiment with photosynthesis and its pigments after watching the lawn change color due to a water hose that was placed on it. Soon after that observation, I was making chlorophyll prints. Photosynthesis takes place in plants as carbon dioxide, water, and light energy is converted to sugars and oxygen. Photosynthesis is the main route by which free energy in the environment is made available to the living world. In my work, photosynthesis is used to record images onto leaves. The leaves are then cast in resin, like biological samples for scientific studies. The images were first digitized and outputted to transparences, then exposed onto tropical leaves. The image formation was all due to chlorophyll, light, carbon dioxide, and water: the life source of plants and, consequently the Earth.

This process deals with the idea of elemental transmigration: the decomposition and composition of matter into other forms. The images of war are part of the leaves, and live inside and outside of them. The leaves express the continuum of war. They contain the residue of the Vietnam War: bombs, blood, sweat, tears, and metals. The dead have been incorporated into the landscape of Vietnam during the cycles of birth, life, and death; through the recycling and transformation of materials, and the creation of new materials. Since matter is neither created nor destroyed, but only transformed, the remnants of the Vietnam and American War live on forever in the Vietnamese landscape. This body of work addresses this continuum. In this exhibition, artifacts are presented with the artworks to give evidence of existence.

*Webster, Donovan. Aftermath: The Remnants of War. New York: Pantheon, 1996, p. 166.

Binh Danh, San Jose, CA, November 11, 2001