Blindfolded and wary, wrapped in what appears to be the flag of the United States of America, Nikki – the artist’s younger brother – sits at the side of a river, calmly looking ahead with one exposed eye. Around his neck hangs a jade pendant known to offer protection and luck in many Asian and Diasporic communities. These meaningful fragments create a layered image of self, one that claims and shapes its own definition of belonging, as if to say: this, too, is what America looks like. 

Known to me as a poet and author, Ocean Vuong tells stories of the immigrant working-class experience in America. Born in Ho Chi Minh City in 1988 and raised in Hartford, Vuong draws on the intergenerational experiences of diaspora that followed the Vietnamese resistance war against America. Their photographic debut SỐNG, currently exhibited at CPW (formerly the Center for Photography at Woodstock) in Kingston, New York, portrays two brothers grieving their mother, pictured here at work in a beauty parlour. The title SỐNG means ‘to live’ in Vietnamese, carrying both weight and lightness at once.

Looking at the image memorial (2023) I see what looks like a corpse, covered by a white cloth. Upon closer inspection I notice cards, letters, and flags which lean against a tall black fence, and, squinting my eyes, I make out the Washington Monument, a 169-metre-tall obelisk designed by Robert Mills in an Egyptian Revival style. Built to commemorate George Washington, a Founding Father of the United States and the nation’s first president, it is said to represent stability and power. However, in the context of today’s political climate – one marked by polarisation and dwindling democracies – I can't help but see another grievance: that of a country which is cropping the image of itself.

OCEAN VUONG is writer, professor, and photographer, and the author of the poetry collection Time is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022) and the novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (­Penguin Press, 2019), which has sold more than a million copies in forty ­languages. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Ocean currently splits his time between Northampton, MA, and New York City, where he serves as a tenured ­professor in Modern Poetry and ­Poetics in the MFA Programme at NYU.

KATY HUNDERTMARK is an Amsterdam-based artist, editor and curator with a special interest in art practices that reframe and expand the photographic canon. Previously she worked as Programme Assistant at Stills Centre for Photography (Edinburgh) as well as co-editor of the photography publication Notes – Letters to Photography. She currently works as managing editor of Foam Magazine as well as curator at Foam Museum and writes a Substack newsletter on all things photography and publishing, called Dear Midnight. Through an international approach she aims to create cross-cultural connections and mutual understanding between makers, audiences and institutions worldwide. She has lectured at art schools like for example ECAL (Lausanne), KABK (The Hague) and LABA (Valencia).