The Merging of Family History & Culture through Photography with Tracy Dong

Name, age, where are you from, what format you like using, what are you currently working on if you are? 

I’m Tracy Dong, 29, my family is from Saigon, Vietnam, I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and I am currently in NYC/Berlin. I use 35mm and 6x7 and 6x4.5 medium format film, and polaroids. I am working on exploring the merging and creation of new transcultural forms as a result of displacement and migration; what it feels and looks like to be part of an otherwise unseen diaspora and finding those among your diaspora in different parts of the world.

What about your surroundings/environments and upbringing interested you? 

I come from a post-colonialist and post-war lineage, in which my father was a Vietnam War veteran who was forced to erase his entire photographic archive to maintain our family’s safety and rights from the North Vietnamese regime that took over when the war ended. So I think that gaping hole in my family history had instigated this incessant desire to re-create a photographic narrative that was destroyed. Upward social mobility through western society as a minority in itself requires creativity, and the more I make my way through the world, meet people and learn their stories, the more I want to help preserve them as much as my own. There is a strong sense of purpose I’ve found in documenting and archiving such a resilient generation to prove that we existed and have the capability to thrive. 

When was the first time you met photography? How did you feel when you met it?

It was probably when my parents showed me their photographs of themselves when they were young adults in Saigon in the 60s, but any photo taken during the time when they were enlisted in the Vietnam War during the 70s was destroyed, and I was just so jarred but fascinated by the fact that I could see someone’s life before I came into this world, and that I could create my own narrative based on the photographs that existed and never ceased to exist. I think it clicked with me in a certain way as a child how powerful of a tool photography can be and the importance of preserving time. 

Tell us about current projects you have been working on (could be any, or just work you have been doing in general). Is this story inspired out of personal reasons, or others? What are you most excited about in these projects?

I feel this urgent need to analyze and critique the role that western imperialism has played out in mine and other people’s lives. The act of sifting through one’s layers and sense of belonging in spite of displacement is extremely powerful. In this project I am working on now, I am trying to figure out how to grasp onto and visualize this notion of straddling between origin and destination and how it can offer paradigms for not just survival but also growth in the next century. I plan to call it “Reassemblage”, named after one of Trinh T. Minh Ha’s films, and also as a play on words of diaspora finding their way back together again after the “reunification of Vietnam”, dissolving past boundaries of north vs south and east vs west. So in not just photographing those around me who come from migrant backgrounds, but also pointing the camera back at me I can understand and contribute to the discourse of how diaspora and hybridity can help us move past outdated ordinary tropes, maybe even help us maintain a sense of civic equilibrium. 

How did you find your visual literacy? Why are you attracted to certain images more than others? 

Honestly I think I’ve gotten mine from looking out of the window in the backseat of my parents’ car when they drive me around when I was a kid in my hometown in Vancouver, Canada. The Canadian landscape on the west coast is dramatically beautiful but also there’s this moody, misty, overcast soft glow that feels melancholic and I tend to incorporate those tones in a lot of my photographs. I also am a cinema-goer, and I think I’ve picked up a lot of visual acumen from viewing classic cinematography in the theater, particularly 90s independent films like Gus Van Sant, and Wong Kar Wai - the way that he illuminates the underground and unseen spaces is just intoxicating and brilliant.

Imagine meeting someone who is picking up a camera for the first time. What do you tell them?

That camera can at times feel like a weapon or some sort of source of protection, because you are in a way shooting, and capturing something very powerful, which is truth.