One of the most renowned emerging artists of the contemporary art since 1945, Binh Danh was born 9 October 1977, and this Vietnamese-born photographer and artist is most renowned for opening up the enthralling method of printing directly on plant leaves. As in the case of several celebrated artists, Binh Danh also attempted to convey the sanctified visions of his experience which are formed in relation to political violence in his surroundings. Danh along with his family was forced flee Vietnam on a boat at the end of the war in the country and they took refuge in Malaysia.
Later in 1979, Binh Danh’s family migrated to California, in the United States, where he is settled now. The artist completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from San Jose State University in 2002 and his Master of Fine Arts from Stanford University in 2004. Significantly, Binh Danh was one of the youngest artists to be offered admission for M. F.
S. in Stanford University and he selected the subject of studio art for his Master’s degree. “During his college years Danh invented a unique process for photo-synthetically transferring photo images onto the surfaces of leaves.His first return trip to Vietnam inspired him to create a revelatory body of work employing this technique, what he calls ‘chlorophyll prints.
’” (Barlow and Hammer, 7-8) Today, Binh Danh has emerged as a celebrated artist of national importance and his works offer convincing evidence to his Vietnamese heritage and the collective memory of the war in Viet Nam and Cambodia. This paper makes a reflective analysis of the life and works of the artist Binh Danh in order to comprehend the themes, techniques, background, etc of his art works.In a profound exploration of the life and works of the artist Binh Danh, it becomes lucid that Danh is an artist whose works reflect his visions that originated in the background of the political violence in the region as well as his socio-cultural and religious practice. As he explains it, Binh Danh’s works are mainly concerned with mortality, memory, history, landscape, justice, evidence, and spirituality, all of which correspond to his socio-cultural experiences.
However, it is essential to realize that the artist is more renowned for the development of the technique of photo-synthetically transferring photo images onto the surfaces of leaves. In this technique, Binh Danh makes use of the chlorophyll printing process in which the action of photosynthesis helps the artist present photographic images embedded in leaves. Another technique employed by Danh in his latest body of works is the Daguerreotype process. As Ketzel Levine maintains, “When Binh Danh prints pictures on leaves, something inexplicable happens.
His small, green canvases expand beyond measure with both the seen and the unseen. The serenity of the Buddha on a circular nasturtium suggests a primordial, benevolent world; armed soldiers in camouflage, crouched in calla lily foliage, appear to be both predator and prey; and a young Vietnamese boy, held in the fingered palm of a philodendron, aches with human vulnerability. ” (Levine) Therefore, it is fundamental to comprehend that Binh Danh has become distinguished artist of national importance thanks mainly to his technique as an artist.Another major area of excellence for Binh Danh is photography, where he has come up with some of the exhilarating inventions in the technique of capturing his ideas in the interconnectedness of the natural world.
One of the most important moments in the career of Binh Danh as a photographer has been when he found that chlorophyll prints can be used to reflect his socio-cultural experiences in connection to the natural world.For example, in his picture featuring soldiers in the jungle, Danh reflects the image printed on a long, tropical leaf, which helps him to represent the soldiers in camouflage uniforms as becoming one with the scenery represented. “He also makes poignant use of leaves that are marred by insects or scarred by weather, which he finds, add a sense of injury and decay to his prints. ” (Levine) Levine makes the following comments regarding Danh’s technique of photography: “Binh Danh begins by picking a leaf — often from his mother’s garden.
To keep it from drying out, he fills a small bag with water and ties it to its stem. He places the leaf on a felt-covered board, and puts a negative directly on the leaf… He places glass over the leaf, clips the glass and board together, and puts the assemblage on the patio roof. ” (Levine) Therefore, it becomes lucid that Danh has been effective in conveying his themes through his photographic and artistic technique which is referred as chlorophyll print.One of the most essential factors that contributed to Danh’s art and photography is his experience of the war and its remains.
In other words, his artistic vision was shaped and developed in the background of the war. Danh made use of his style of chlorophyll print to reflect his experiences of the war and he was effective in this method. His unique technique of photo-synthetically transferring photo images onto the surfaces of leaves helped him eloquently contribute to the collective memory of the war in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Surrounded by the subtle but ubiquitous physical remains of the war — bomb craters converted to rice paddies is one example he uses — Danh observed that memories of war devastation had been internalized into everyday life.
This led him to create chlorophyll prints… drawing on archival images of the Vietnam-American War but using native tropical leaves. ” (Barlow and Hammer, 8) Through his artistic works using chlorophyll print, Binh Danh has been effective in representing the plight of the people who are haunted by the memory of the people long dead and events long gone.As grown up in a religious Buddhist family, his religious experiences and rituals also influenced Danh’s art, “It’s almost my religious practice when I make my own artwork because I’m coming up with my own concept about what is life, what is death, what is consciousness, what is history. ” (KQED-Binh Danh).
In other words, Danh’s aesthetic vision has been immensely influenced by the morality, memory, and spiritual practice of his past. In conclusion, a profound analysis of the life and works of Binh Danh confirms that he is righty considered as one of the most prominent and emerging artists of the contemporary art.Through his artistic techniques and themes, Danh has created an everlasting imprint of the grandeur of contemporary art in the minds of the art-lovers. Most importantly, Binh Danh has added greatly into the collective memory of the war in Viet Nam and Cambodia through his images and pictures reflecting the morality, memory, and spiritual practice of his past.
The specific macrobiotic technique of his own invention, known as chlorophyll print, clearly suggests the quality of his art works and photography.He experienced that chlorophyll print technique is a way to reflect his socio-cultural experiences in connection to the natural world. He said of his work, “Throughout my education, I have always been very attracted to Art, History, and Science. The histories I search for are the hidden stories embedded in the landscape around me.
The processes used in my work represent my interest in the sciences and photographic techniques. ” (Boing Boing) In short, the works of Binh Danh are the results of the artist’s own experiences and inventions and they will long remain as an icon of his artistic quality.Works CitedBarlow, Tani and Brian Hammer. “Introduction: War Capital Trauma.
” Positions. Duke University Press. Vol. 16.
Iss. 1. 2008. P 7-8.
Levine, Ketzel. “Binh Danh’s Chlorophyll Art.” Ketzel Levine’s Talking Plants. 2003.
November 14, 2010. .Binh Danh’s chlorophyll prints – Boing Boing 2007 www.boingboing.net/2006/10/binh-danhs-chlorophy.htmlBinh Danh: Spark | KQED Public Media for Northern CA 2006 www.kqed.org/arts/profile/?index.jsp?essid=7660
