The exhibition titled “My Culture – Conversations in Open Spaces” which gathered photos depicting the life of ethnic people across Vietnam officially kicked off in Ho Chi Minh City on November 10.

Organized at Lam Son Park in the city’s downtown, the event has attracted a number of foreign visitors in addition to local residents.

Although most foreigners have come to the exhibition by chance, they have been deeply impressed by the fact that the photos were taken by amateur photographers who are members of ethnic communities including H’mong, Dao, Muong, Thai, Pa Co, Van Kieu and Khmer.

The photographs are the result of photovoice, a program held by the Institute for Studies of Society, Economy and Environment (iSEE) in which the institute handed out cameras to ethnic people to capture the best moments of their daily life in the most vivid way, which is difficult for professional photographers to do.

Jasmin and her friend Dominik, both from Austria, said that they were interested in knowing more about the culture of small ethnicities in Vietnam via the photos while Rachel Gehrre from Australia admitted that the pictures gave her a special understanding of how Vietnamese people live.

“I see lots of activities, especially customs like ceremonies, marriage, how they farm, what age children start to learn to do things,” she said.

Though she knew about the exhibition beforehand, Anne Fromm Christiansen said she was impressed with what the photovoice program has done.

“I think it’s really interesting to see the cultures. They are very nice pictures. I like how they catch the moments and people in them were not posing,” she added.

For their part, Gail Falco and her partner Alan Jacobson from New York said that through the photos, they have come to understand more about local culture.

“The life of ethnic people in VN is very colorful and cultural. It’s nice to see how people have their own ways of training their children to carry out the traditional. It’s really a nice exhibition and the photos are beautiful,” Falco said. “I’d like to see this more in the city. As a tourist, this is why Vietnam would be more meaningful to me.”

The event also attracted a number of local celebrities. Actress Kim Khanh, who said she learned about the exhibition via a friend, said that this is the first time she has seen such a special photo exhibition in Vietnam.

“The photographers, they’re just amateurs, but they have taken very vivid pictures. The photos reflecting cultures through insiders are very specific and absolutely different from pictures taken by professional photographers. I really like the photographs here,” she shared.

Speaking at the event’s opening ceremony, Ly Hong Kieu, a Khmer woman who took part in photovoice, said she wanted to change what people think about Khmer people.

“Through photovoice, I want to introduce the lives of the Khmer people. People usually say that our life is poor since we have a lot of festivals. But that’s just not right. Each festival has its own meaning to us. Festivals are our ancestors’ heritage, we have no right to give them up,” she stated. “I also took photos of farmers to show that we also work, we’re not as lazy as people think.”

She also shared the difficulties she faced in taking part in the program. “We are farmers, we didn’t know how to take photographs, but then we were introduced to the photovoice program. We feel interested because we think we can do something to introduce our culture to outsiders.”

At the event, iSEE also raised funds the “500 cameras for ethnic minority people” program by calling on donations for a photo book, postcard and calendar with the hope to spread photovoice to many minority communities in the future.