Vietnam: A Book of Changes

Vietnam: A Book of Changes by Epstein, Mitch. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780393040272.

A photographers compelling and poetic odyssey through modern-day Vietnam. Mitch Epsteins evocative pictures reveal a complex Vietnam that few Americans have ever seen.This is not a document about the war; nor is it the pastoral idyll other photographers have portrayed. Vietnam, through Epsteins eyes, is a sometimes disturbing and sometimes sublime palimpsest. Vietnam: A Book of Changes interprets a culture and landscape largely cut off from the West for the last thirty years, and now open to a market economy and a new relationship to America. The photographs are suffused with the rawness of Vietnamese life lived on the economic and political edge. Under the layer of friendship lies the tension of politics; under beauty lies violence; under the stark faces of remote villagers is the entrepreneurial momentum drawing them to the city; and under the remnants of war is an artistic bohemia grappling with new freedoms and continued censorship.