HANOI: After The War

Review: Christopher George 

Hanoi. After the War is a story of hardship, poverty and endurance, but also of an ancient culture, of a brave and resilient people, of beauty amidst austerity. Candid photography of a city on the edge of survival, and its population so resilient  reveals a touching story of a chaotic period. 

Photographer John Ramsden guides us through poignant accounts of an unforgettable time and place, revealing a country that was largely cut off from the outside world. These striking and poignant  photographs, together with the memories of Vietnamese writers, constitute both an historical record and a faithful portrait of an epoch.

“The Hanoi I knew after the war – a subdued place, though of wistful beauty – is now a booming modern city. This is a journey back in time, to a city exhausted by forty years of conflict. The people whose lives are pictured here fought through the war and endured the hardships that followed. Though I could observe their daily life, any meaningful contact with the local people was forbidden in those Cold War days. The stories told in these pages take us into the inner world of the Vietnamese: bitter-sweet memories of a time which now seems vanishingly distant.”
-John Ramsden