» Mobile Military Medical Clinic during the period when the enemy is defoliating U Minh Forest 1970

In Vo An Khanh’s second frame of the guerrilla clinic, sharp scalpels gleam behind the veils. The comatose soldier lies covered in cold white sheets on the operating table. Seen from afar, his body seems to levitate among the trees as if under the spell of the masked medic- sorcerers. There existed a third frame of the scene, a close-up of the shrapnel removal, but Vo An Khanh says that negative went missing a long time ago. Except for a tiny cut in the crown of the patient’s head, the spooky slit in the middle of this picture, viewers could barely see the rest of his vulnerable body and the invasive surgical procedure. Captured at a distance, the operation retains a semblance of privacy behind the clinic’s nettings and the forest’s unruly verdure. The brambly bogs and marshes provide many layers of disguise and protection to the revolutionaries in the forest, making it hard for one to ever get a clear view of the mythologized liberation force, which the Americans often call the “other side” of the war.

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

(Edited from text excerpts provided by San Art)