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Chung Hoang Chuong

I hope these photographs draw the onlookers into contemporary Vietnam to see the Vietnamese's courageous work of rebuilding their lives, their families, their culture, and their country shattered by so many years of conflict. Most importantly, I want these visuals to bring forth a country with normal people dreaming normal dreams. —Chung Hoang Chuong

Chung Hoang Chuong is currently on the faculty in Asian American Studies at the City College of San Francisco. As one of the early immigrants from Vietnam and seeing from up close the changes within the Vietnamese American community, he was part fo the Sixties generation where he closely identifies with. He was first trained in the visual arts at Lone Mountain College where he obtained his MFA in Photography and then moved to teaching with the first course in Vietnamese American Studies taught in 1981 at the University of California, Berkeley.

In the Seventies, he worked as a volunteer and a resettlement worker during the Southeast Asian refugee movements. Contracted by the International Institute, he produced several training video programs for the incoming immigrants. Combining this experience with the activism during the refugee period, he introduced another course looking at the resettlement process of Southeast Asian Americans. In the late 80s, he was appointed assistant-professor at San Francisco State University and went on to become the first director of the Vietnamese American Studies Center in 1996 after extensive effort of reconnecting the diaspora community with the home country. One of these activities is the yearly study abroad trip to Vietnam and other regions of Southeast Asia where he teaches the Vietnamese American experience as seen from the original sending country. This program is now housed at the City College of San Francisco.

As a visual artist, he joined Asian American photographer, Josel Namkung in a 1973 photography show at the Focus gallery in San Francisco and was also part of the Group 16 exhibition organized by the late Oliver Gagliani.

"Reconnecting with Vietnam" was also the theme of his one person photo show at the gallery of the Rosenberg Library at CCSF in 1999. His most recent publication is the "Book of Perceptions" with co-author Truong Tran highlighting the feelings of reconnection of Vietnamese Americans with their hoemland. He is a native of Vietnam and is currently serving as the President of the San Francisco/Ho Chi Minh City Sister City Committee.