Ba Lan: The Story of the Vietnamese Diaspora in Poland
Ba Lan means “Poland” in Vietnamese and this project focuses on the Vietnamese diaspora in Warsaw. It seeks to understand how this community reconciles their identity in a country which believes that nationality is rooted in ethnic origin. Poland is a mono-ethnic country whose minority ethnic populations are seldom depicted by the media, and I drew on my experiences as a Polish immigrant the UK in my collaborative work with the Vietnamese community in Warsaw.
In contrast with the Vietnamese diaspora in the US, who are often of refugee origin, the Vietnamese communities in Poland began due to student exchanges. The Vietnamese diaspora in Poland started to form in the 1950s with a current estimated population of 50-80,000.
In this series I use photography alongside archival imagery and create photographic collages that challenge predictable stereotypes of this community. Poland’s Communist past is central in the project and for this reason I incorporate archival imagery into the photographs that I had taken. As a result, the “preserved” state history is intertwined with personal stories. The juxtaposition of the colour portraits with black and white images subverts the one-dimensional narrative, and hints at a larger, more complex understanding of the Vietnamese community.