VietNamNet Bridge – The Faces of Asian Ethnic Groups is the theme of a photo exhibition of a French photographer, which has opened in Hue.



The exhibition displays 46 photos, mostly black and white, featuring the lives of people in remote areas.


The photos portray the life and culture of people in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue, as well as Cambodia's Angkor Wat and Luang Prabang in Laos.


Laval Sebatien's treatment of floating houses, flickering cooking fires, the innocent smiles of kids, the austere expression on the face of an ethnic man, or a tobacco pipe between a woman's lips, captures the enigma that endures in this region.

The photos include portraits and depict both traditional customs and changes in people's lives.


Images in opposition, such as traditional clothes and satellite dishes, old roofs and asphalt roads, reflect the changes in the lives of the ethnic people.


Multicultural: Photos displayed at the Faces of Asian Ethnic Groups exhibition which opened recently in Hue.
The images have no titles, allowing the viewer to freely think, feel and discover the characters, to "try to meet them, talk to them, look at them and understand them," Sebatien said.


"The way I take photos is not to tell people that I am taking photos," Sebatien said. "I make no arrangement for the images."


One morning, Sebatien said he came to a Lao village and met a young girl carrying her brother in front of her house. By the afternoon, she had become acquainted with Sebatien, who was able to capture a photo of her sitting on sand with a radiant smile.


"If I hadn't come closer to her, I wouldn't have had that smile," he said. "I realised that people still speak and have a mutual understanding even if they don't use the same language."


Born in 1973, Sebatien discovered photography when he was given a camera by his father. He moved to Paris to work as an assistant for a photo studio in 1992 and subsequently began working as a professional in Poitiers.


Sebatien visited Viet Nam for the first time in 1995 and has accumulated thousands of images of people in about 20 Vietnamese ethnic groups, which he intends to publish in a book.


The exhibition will end on July 5.


VietNamNet/Viet Nam News