Photography (Photography)

In Extra Curriculum Political Science Class 7/1972 , a group of women walk bare-foot and single file towards Dat Mui Mangrove in Ca Mau Province to attend ‘political science class’. These women wear headdress to protect their identities because they are spies placed strategically in the South by the Viet Cong. These classes of the ‘National Liberation Front for Southern Vietnam’ took place in the mangrove swamp in makeshift wooden huts where they would learn more of the political points of view of their forces and the changes in military situations across the country.

Photography (Photography)

The black-and-white photograph Men (055, 065) (2012) depicts two similarly built young men – young and slim, with dark tousled hair and a square jaw line – seated aside one another in identical outfits. It is unclear if these subjects are related, despite the obvious doubling of visual cues, and Lassry offers few hints to suggest that these men have any association beyond their sitting for the same picture. By extension, Lassry subverts conventions in portrait photography by identifying his subjects with numbers, erasing the familiarity inherent in the act of naming, Men (055, 065) functions as an anti-portrait in which anonymity supplants intimacy.