Ernst Spycher and Christoph Braendle travelled throughout Vietnam in November 2004 to retrace some of the scenes of the war that ended thirty years ago. They find a country whose wounds have healed and whose scars seem hidden beneath the tender young shoots of rice in the paddy fields, and they find a world in which normality seems the only way forward. It takes a second and a third look, however, to discover the gaping abysses opened up by the terrible ravages of war, abysses which have remained wide open to this day. Ernst Spycher’s photographs document these painful insights with the affectionate detachment that characterises his work. He portrays people who took part in the fighting, and locations that were the scene of particularly hard-fought battles during the war or which have come to symbolise particularly horrific crimes: Keh San, Vinh Moc, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the 17th parallel for instance, and of course My Lai. He then contrasts these pictures with everyday life in Vietnam today. Christoph Braendle’s narrative tells the story of two friends that begins at the time of the resistance to the American occupation and features adventurous episodes in Europe, America and Africa, culminating in Vietnam, where they realise that their memories are nothing other than a particular form of the present.
http://www.meta4vietnam.org

Ernst Spycher, *1944 in Switzerland; lives and works in Zürich.
Christoph Braendle, *1953 in Switzerland; lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

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