Hiên
Hiên Lâm Duc
biography
Franco-Laotian photographer, Lâm Duc Hiên has been a member of Agence VU from 1995 to 2002 and since 2017. He lives and works between France and Kurdistan.
Born in 1966 on the banks of the Mekong in Paksé, Laos, Hiên Lâm Duc followed his family into exile after the victory of the Pathet-Lao. From the night crossing of the Mekong to Thailand, to two years in a refugee camp, and two escapes, the journey he began to reach France affected him forever. In 1977, when he arrived in France, he turned to an artistic career and obtained his diploma in Fine Arts in Plastic Expression.
His openness to the world colours his photographic work with a humanist sensitivity. His commitment is reflected in his personal projects as well as in commissions for the press and for NGOs. Romania, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Rwanda, Sudan and especially Iraq are the territories he covers. His testimony makes sense when faced with the massive destruction of the major conflicts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Committed to the protection of natural resources, he also documents the impact of contemporary changes on the way of life along the Mekong and Niger rivers.
Since the Gulf War in March 1991, he has become a direct witness to the suffering of the Iraqi population. People wounded between the devastating consequences of the international embargo and the terror imposed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. At the heart of his lens: hospitals, schools, markets, etc. which convey the population’s scarcity and weariness.
His work is regularly published in press, edited in books or exhibited. He has won above all the Leica Award, the Great European Award of the city of Vevey, the award of Villa Medicis outside the wall, or again the award of Jean-Luc Lagardère’s Foundation. The prestigious World Press Photo had rewarded the photographer’s portraits “Iraqi People”.
“Hiên Lâm Duc’s photography is a photography of necessity. The need to recover one’s history, one’s childhood, one’s identity, the need, because of one’s own history, to bear witness so that others do not suffer a similar one, the need to tell.” – Christian Caujolle
series
The war in Ukraine, 2022
Kurdistan, life under trees
The Iraqi War, 2017
Yusra, Free Swimmer, 2016
Life After Typhoon Haiyan, 2013
Femmes, après coup, 2010
Mekong River, Stories Of Men, 2009
Faces, 2001
Enfance, Enfances, 2001
Famine in South Sudan, 1998
Romania, the Kids on the Pavement, 1992
Science in India, a female universe, 2023
The war in Ukraine, 2022
Kurdistan, life under trees
The Iraqi War, 2017
Yusra, Free Swimmer, 2016
Life After Typhoon Haiyan, 2013
Femmes, après coup, 2010
Mekong River, Stories Of Men, 2009
Faces, 2001
Enfance, Enfances, 2001
Famine in South Sudan, 1998
Romania, the Kids on the Pavement, 1992
Science in India, a female universe, 2023
The war in Ukraine, 2022
Kurdistan, life under trees
The Iraqi War, 2017
Yusra, Free Swimmer, 2016
Life After Typhoon Haiyan, 2013
Femmes, après coup, 2010
Mekong River, Stories Of Men, 2009
Faces, 2001
Enfance, Enfances, 2001
Famine in South Sudan, 1998
Romania, the Kids on the Pavement, 1992
interviews
Lam Duc Hien, photographe
Nara Keo Kosal
—
2020
The photographer Lam Duc Hien talks about his work on the Mekong.
En sol majeur
RFI
—
Interview by Yasmine Chouaki, 2010
A reporter without borders, a witness of humanitarian chaos, Lâm Duc Hiên, for several years has been interest in his own roots from the other border et in the fate of the greatest rivers in the world. He is the author of seven books and the director of the documentary: The Mekong River and the Photographer.
En sol majeur
RFI
—
Interview by Yasmine Chouaki, 2009
Ripped from the edges of the Mekong River as a child, passed by the refugee camps in Thailand, this “child of History” became a photographer to answer the need to fix what was amputated to him. From now on, caught up by the international actuality, the one of Romania, Kosovo or Rwanda, Lâm Duc Hiên’s lens is blending between the hell of the other and a kind-of romantic thing. Perhaps an effect of the Mekong, this river as mystical as it is enchanting.
books
Kurdistan, mon ami
Le Mékong
Faces
Irak, le jardin des murmures
Carnet de visites
Enfance, enfances
Roumanie, les gamins du pavé
Kurdistan, mon ami
Le Mékong
Faces
Irak, le jardin des murmures
Carnet de visites
Enfance, enfances
Roumanie, les gamins du pavé
Kurdistan, mon ami
Le Mékong
Faces
Irak, le jardin des murmures
Carnet de visites
Enfance, enfances
Roumanie, les gamins du pavé
Awards
Prize of the Festival “Chroniques Nomades”, France
2004
World Press Photo Contest, first prize category “Portrait Stories”, Netherlands
For his work « Iraqi people under the embargo”
2001
Villa Medicis Hors les Murs Scholarship
1996
European Prize of the city of Vevey, Switzerland
1995
Prize of the National Center of Photography, Less Thirty, France
1994
Prize of the Foundation Marcel Bluestein-Blanchet, France
1994