In Conversation at CPW: Ocean Vuong & An-My Lê

In conjunction with his first solo photography exhibition, , currently on view at CPW, poet-author Ocean Vuong and photographer/CPW Vision Award honoree An-My Lê will meet to discuss issues raised by Sống. Rough Draft Bar & Books will provide refreshments and copies of Vuong's books for sale.

As an artist who renders a soulful, nuanced representation of the immigrant working-class experience in America, Ocean Vuong extends his deeply personal vision beyond the written word with Sống. Born in Ho Chi Minh City in 1988 and raised in a working-class Vietnamese American family in Hartford, Connecticut, Vuong draws on the intergenerational experiences of diaspora that followed the Vietnam War, known in Vuong’s native country as the Vietnamese Resistance War Against America.

The subtle work of Vietnamese-American photographer An-My Lê often focuses on issues of deception and simulation, particularly as they involve the military and the landscape. In her early black-and-white series Small Wars (1999–2002), she photographed Vietnam War reenactors staging mock combat in the faux jungles of Virginia. Her 2023 exhibition Between Two Rivers/Giữa hai giòng sông/Entre deux rivières at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was a thirty-year retrospective, including film, textiles, and sculpture.

Banner image: Ocean Vuong.

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Host or Publisher The Center for Photography at Woodstock