Photojournalist's lifelong commitment to portraying 2,000 heroic Vietnamese mothers

THE HANOI TIMES — War brings immeasurable loss and suffering, and perhaps no suffering is more profound than the agony of mothers whose children never returned home.

In those years, young students across Vietnam put down their books and pens, packed their bags, said goodbye to their loved ones, and headed to the front lines. Many never returned.

They left behind mothers who spend the rest of their lives waiting in silence, hearts heavy with longing, grief etched into every passing day, and a pain that time could never heal.

Through more than 2,000 photographs of mothers, Colonel Tran Hong, a journalist and photographer, has captured the spirit and sorrow of Vietnamese women. His images reflect in their simplicity the deep suffering etched on the faces of mothers who have given everything.

"People say that to lose a child is to lose the future. But in this country, these Vietnamese women gave their children to the country," said Col. Tran Hong.

A lifelong search for the portrayal of Mother

Born in Duc Tho District, the central province of Ha Tinh, Tran Hong joined the army at the age of 19. Throughout his career, the artist had pursued all kinds of beauty near and far, before being deeply touched by his mother's grief.

For Hong, portraying Vietnamese mothers is not a hobby, but a passion that burns in his heart.

"I want to capture sorrow through the lens, but there is a huge gap between reality and what the lens can deliver," the artist recalls of the time he photographed the heroic mothers.

Hong realized that the inner feelings of mothers are not easy to portray, especially for those who have lost their children, those whose children died in the fierce fighting.

"The joys of mothers are sometimes fleeting; behind them lies an imprinted sadness, an immense and unfillable void," he reflected.

The passion for finding and portraying the heroic Vietnamese mothers came naturally to the photojournalist. After leaving the battlefield in 1969, Colonel Hong was sent by the Ministry of National Defense to study journalism at the Central School of Propaganda and Education (now the Academy of Journalism and Communication). After graduation, he worked for the Vietnam People's Army Newspaper.

Pains never fade

According to Tran Hong, each heroic mother he met comes from a different background and life story, but they all share one profound truth: the extraordinary endurance and unimaginable pain of losing her child. "It is a pain beyond words. No mother ever wants her child to die just to be called a 'hero.'"

Colonel Tran Hong's photos of heroic Vietnamese mothers are not only his property but also the country's sacred treasures that truthfully depict the pain of war. This pain is nowhere far away, but right in our present lives, reminding us of the journey of a nation born and raised from war. Tens of thousands of young soldiers sacrificed their youth or lives for the Fatherland. Those who stayed behind and endured the suffering for the rest of their lives were none other than everlasting mothers.

One of Tran Hong's photos that left a strong impression on viewers was the picture of heroic mother Nguyen Thi Thu, born in 1904, in Dien Ban Town, the central province of Quang Nam.

The mother is sitting in front of a bamboo tray with nine empty bowls and nine pairs of chopsticks around an incense burner. On her bed is a portrait of her youngest son. A family reunion still awaits her nine missing children.

Mother Thu's family has 12 martyrs, including nine sons, two maternal grandchildren, and one son-in-law. She was the woman with the largest number of descendants who died in the two nearly 30-year wars of resistance against the French colonialists and the American imperialists.

One of Colonel Hong's unforgettable memories was the time he came to photograph the heroic Vietnamese mother, Nguyen Thi Khanh, in Hamlet 8, Hon Dat District, the southern province of Kien Giang. "The 4th Corps had just built a beautiful house for her. As soon as I arrived at the gate, she caught a glimpse of my military uniform and ran out screaming: "Oh! My child is back..." Then she cried and I cried too... This time I couldn't take a picture, I just greeted the mother and left...

"On the fourth visit, I came quietly. She was sitting unsteadily by a bronze pot and a very sad tabby cat. Before I even raised my camera, I wished that one of her seven children had returned to her. Then that rice pot wouldn't have been so small, and that tray wouldn't have contained just a pair of chopsticks and a bowl like this..."

As the years passed, the youth of these mothers faded, consumed by the endless wait for their children to return, just once. Never voicing their grief, they endured in silence. But every time they saw a military uniform, a fleeting hope would rise in them, as if their child had finally come home.

This profound anguish, captured through the lens of journalist Tran Hong, is deeply ingrained in each portrait, conveying the silent, unspoken struggle in the hearts of these mothers.

Looking at these photos, any viewer can feel the weight of their unending pain. In this way, his photographs speak to the hearts of the mothers, a silent but powerful testament to their enduring sacrifice. This, Hong believes, is the true success of his photographic career.

Recently, the public had the opportunity to see 50 precious photos of heroic Vietnamese mothers taken by Tran Hong at the photo exhibition titled "Memories and Legends," which runs through May 25 at the Ho Guom Cultural Information Center in Hanoi. These pictures were taken over nearly five decades (1976-2020) by the colonel as a journalist, photographer, and former soldier of Battalion 2, Group 559, Truong Son Corps.