| Saigon suburbs, 2001: Former Viet Cong photographer Vo An Khanh, with one of his many scapbooks containing his life's work. Khanh was born in 1939, and began taking photographs in 1957 in a family-owned photo shop in the Mekong Delta, which had to be abandoned when the war came to Bac Lieu in 1960. Khanh fled with his family, an old Kodak press camera, chemicals and film, spending much of the war living in the extremely inhospitable U Minh Forest. Although Khanh was a revolutionary—as were his parents during the French time—he worked alone during the war, and rarely had his photographs published. Several times he attempted to send his photographs to Hanoi, but they were lost en route. Mr. Khanh meticulously kept his negatives in glassine sleeves inside old metal American ammunition boxes, buried in his yard. Inside with the film are small bags of roasted rice that act as a desiccant, and his negatives look like they were made yesterday. Only following the publication of Another Vietnam has Mr. Khanh's amazing work become known. Mr. Khanh humbly says it was indeed worth the wait... |