Review of the series R. Like by the magazine Urbanautica

By Prof. Steve Bisson, Paris College of Art
Chief editor Urbanautica Institute

THE WEIGHT OF REMEMBRANCE AND TIME SCLEROSIS

“Strips of land emerging from the sea of ​​amnesia, that\’s memory. Sooner or later, they will sink. So, sailing in time to explore their internal geography may be fruitful.”

“[…]Quang Lam’s work offers an excellent visual viaduct to its understanding by depicting the iconic history of the so-called Independence Palace of Vietnam. The building summarizes a hundred years of events that have marked the lives and memories of the people of Vietnam. A stormy past that he observes and investigates through an analysis of the archives as an exercise in visual archeology. Through photographs such as the “legendary” one by Malcolm Browne, which immortalizes the Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Ðức setting himself on fire in protest against the Saigon dictatorship in 1963. “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that, ” said Kennedy. The music band Rage Against The Machine used it as the cover of the namesake album later in 1992. The re-educational path of this Vietnamese political landmark also takes shape from its visual representation and facade. And this reminds us of architecture as a manifestation of power. The original palace, the so-called Norodom Palace, was built by the French colonial regime and mirrored the European stylistic canons of the era. The current one, designed by Ngo Viet Thu, winner of the Rome Grand Prix and inaugurated in 1967, has a modernist impetus, still celebrated today. Also called the “Reunification” palace, a title oriented towards a process of reconciliation of the bloody subdivisions of the country. Quang Lam’s photographs show us how the building and its corridors “secretly retain the voices of the past and their whispers still resonate as an echo of the sea in the hollow of a shell.” He adds, “Far from a nostalgic look, the strength of Photography goes beyond the visible, through its accumulation’s power of traces which are actualized at each shooting as in a new performance.”. Those rooms that preserve vestiges frozen as in snapshots figure, in fact, as 3rd reproductions of the past. Like many monumental places, the Independence Palace is somehow a factory of memories that cast their shadow on the dreams and ambitions of future generations. The struggle between oblivion and free will always shape those gray areas. “

Read full article on the website Urbanautica