Vietnam, Forget me not

“December 1972 […] We visit a refugee camp set up on a former US military base in Da Nang. On the door of a hut made of odds and ends, an awkward tag: Forget ME Not. […] Forty-five years later […] I think it’s time that I too put “Forget ME Not” somewhere.”
Abbas plunges into his contact sheets and gives us an intimate selection of the reportages he made in Vietnam from 1972 to 1975, notably being one of the first photographers to bring back images from Viet-Cong. Deeply marked by this country, he returned there in 2008 and confronts his memories with a new nation that has opened to capitalism.

From Saigon to Hanoi, through the anti-war demonstrations in Miami and the Cuban Non-Aligned Summit, until his return to Vietnam thirty years later, this book brings together photos of the war, but also, and above all, images of cities that the photographer has visited, the faces of those he has met. Beyond the historical and political testimony, Abbas talks about this country which touched him deeply.