The Transparency of Light Traversing fifty years of longing (2026)

The Transparency of Light Traversing Fifty Years of Longing is a participatory and multimodal ethnographic project that takes as its central focus a growing archive of photographic slides from pre-1975 Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), collected and curated by the researcher. Building on an ongoing ethnographic exploration with antiquarians in the city and diasporic Vietnamese communities, the project emphasizes how the photographic slide can function both as a repository of microhistories and an epistemological instrument for alternative archival practices.