All photos © Binh Danh

Binh Danh was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the US in 1979. Early in his career, Danh pioneered a technique of printing images directly onto plant matter, activating the plants’ chlorophyll with sunlight. Using this process, Danh printed images associated with the war in Vietnam onto the leaves of tropical plants and grasses. Of this work, Danh explains, “This process deals with the idea of elemental transmigration: the decomposition and composition of matter into other forms. The images of war are part of the leaves, and live inside and outside of them.” Known for his innovative approach to alternative photographic processes, Binh Danh extends and reconsiders the pursuit of pioneering nineteenth-century photographers. For almost a decade, Danh has traveled across the American West, making daguerreotypes of scenic vistas on silver plates. Danh imbues this scenery with a distinctly personal perspective, negotiating his connection as a Vietnamese American with the landscape and history of the United States. This inaugural monograph features two volumes in a slipcase, bringing together three bodies of work and a separate book of essays and memorabilia that serves to contextualize Danh's work.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

The Enigma of Belonging by Binh Danh

Published by Radius Books, 2022.
Hardcover / 2 Volumes in a Slipcase
130 images / 276 pages (total)
ISBN 978-1-955161-03-9

Binh Danh is an Assistant Professor of Art at San José State University’s Photography Program. He received an MFA from Stanford and a BFA from San Jose State University and has emerged as an artist of national importance with work that investigates his Vietnamese heritage and our collective memory of war. Danh produces socially engaged work that often involved community outreach and archival research that deals with mortality, memory, history, landscape, justice, evidence, and spirituality. His awards include a 2010 Eureka Fellowship and a 2019 Creative Work Fund. His work has been collected by the deYoung Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; among others.

David Chickey is Publisher, Designer, and Editorial Director for Radius Books, a nonprofit publishing company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 2007, Radius Books’ mission is to encourage, promote, and publish books of artistic and cultural value. Radius titles have received national recognition, including multiple awards from AIGA, American Association of Museums Publishing, and best book nominations from The New Yorker, TIME, PDN, Independent Publisher, and The Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation. Chickey also owns a private design firm, with clients including Aperture, Abrams, Harvard University, The Lannan Foundation, SITE Santa Fe, and David Zwirner, among others. He is the former board chair of the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, and a graduate of Sussex University, England, and UNC, Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar.

Amanda Minami is a philanthropist supporting innovation in the nexus of science and arts, thru support of cross-cultural education, social entrepreneurship programing in next gen leadership as a Lotus Circle Advisor to the Asia Foundation and as a supporter of Stanford University’s Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education. She is the co-founder of Camera Obscura and sponsor of the Minami Book Grant for Asian American Visual Artists at Radius Books.

Rachel Phillips is a Bay Area photographer who often utilizes the book form, publishing artists’ books under her imprint Treadwell Press. An avid collector of snapshots and paper ephemera, a frequent theme in her work is the desire to “reanimate” vernacular materials. Her most recent book project is an analog consideration of NFT’s. Her work is held in numerous special collections, including: Harvard University; Hirsch Library, Museum of Fine Arts Houston; SFMOMA Library; Yale University; among others. Rachel Phillips also serves as the Communications Director for PhotoAlliance.

Anna Cristina Lee is the Photography Curator for Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries. She has taught, published, and presented on a range of topics, including vernacular photography and contemporary photographers working in the Midwest. Lee earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Chicago and has held teaching and curatorial positions at the University of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago, Smith College, and the Columbus Museum of Art.