Two Roofs is an ongoing project where I observe my family from the position I hold within. I grew up in a family of five. My parents and two much older siblings came to the US in 1985 to escape the aftermath of the Vietnam war. I was born here in 1987. Twenty-one years after they left, my parents built a second home in Vietnam. I have traveled there since I was 13 which has made it possible for me to explore my family’s country of origin and confront the complexities of my position in the family as the only one to be born in America.
Vietnamese and American ways of life collided in my upbringing. The differences became more distinct to me as I got older. My photographs are not staged; they present themselves unexpectedly and they reveal to me something I haven’t learned yet about my family’s history and how they feel now. The overlap between my family’s experience and my own is a space that reveals levels of intimacy which inspire my photographs. Vietnamese plants in a greenhouse filled with late evening New England light; my father seated in a shiny green leather chair in a t-shirt with an American flag on it – these small pauses in time are an unintentional collaboration between me and my family.