» Extra-curriculum Political Science Class 7/1972

In a mangrove forest the solemn women walk in line. Wearing masks with holes for the eyes, the revolutionary officers look as if they were pious pilgrims performing a cryptic ritual. In enemy territory, these women are often disguised as sidewalk peddlers to collect enemy intelligence, transmit messages or store weapons for the resistance. In clandestine cabins in the forest, as Vo explains, they convene and study the tenets of guerrilla warfare to enhance their political consciousness. The masks hide their identity from one another in case of capture and interrogation. The punctum of the photograph, the detail that pricks and pierces the viewer as Roland Barthes says, lies in these soft luminous facial veils. In his media interviews, Võ frequently emphasizes that the officers wear masks to keep each other safe and protect the covert line of communication. It is a pragmatic gesture, not a sign of terrorism or fanaticism as a foreign viewer might imagine. Still, the image exudes a climate of deviant disquiet, which has to do not just with the women’s terrific masks but with the animacy of their frozen bodies. Their barefoot gait carries both motion and stillness. The women seem unagitated by the camera as they walk along the slender wooden bridge. They are elegantly dressed in the no-frill, versatile apparel of the Mekong Delta working class: gingham headscarves, glossy black pants and bà ba silk shirts, long-sleeved, button-down, cinched at the waist. The white array of homespun masks estranges and enriches their humble pastoral presence with a bewitching flavor of fright. 

The work is on permanent display at the Khai Sang headquarters, Paragon, HCMC, Vietnam.

(Edited from text excerpts provided by San Art)