Light from darkness, truth always rises: archiving memory and war trauma

Abstract

Taking a case study approach, this paper focuses on Light from darkness, truth always rises, a series of photographs developed by Vietnamese-American artist Dinh Q. Lê to address the physical and psychological trauma inflicted by Agent Orange on the Vietnamese people in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. From a theoretical and technical perspective, the paper first evaluates the role of memory in Light from darkness, truth always rises. To do so the paper argues for this work to function as Pierre Nora’s lieu de mémoire to reflect on what history transforms and deforms. This is consequently unpacked in the paper as a second line of inquiry: to investigate the relation between contemporary and archival images and how Light from darkness, truth always rises is able to revisit the latter in order to narrate historical events. The photographs are, in fact, inspired by archival images collected from the repository of Tu Du Maternity Hospital in Saigon. Today the archive is available to the public on the internet. This in turn raises ethical questions on conflict of conscience, also discussed in the paper and how Lê navigates these ethical conflicts in his photographs through an aesthetics of divinity.