Ocean Vuong: Sống

Award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist Ocean Vuong (The Emperor of Gladness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Time Is a Mother) has emerged as one of the defining voices of his generation–an artist who renders a soulful, nuanced representation of the immigrant working-class experience in America. With this initial exhibition of his photographs, Vuong extends his deeply personal vision beyond the written word, revealing how his storytelling finds new expression in images.

Born in Ho Chi Minh City in 1988 and raised in a working-class Vietnamese American family in Hartford, Connecticut, Vuong draws on the intergenerational experiences of diaspora that followed the Vietnam War, known in Vuong’s native country as the Vietnamese Resistance War Against America.

Although Vuong has long made photographs—often turning to them in the process of writing—this marks the first time his visual work is being presented publicly. His images, ranging from fluorescent pink-lit nail salons to quiet domestic interiors, capture the textures of immigrant and working-class life in America with rare tenderness, offering a profoundly personal meditation on loss, survival, and belonging. This presentation centers on an up-close body of photographs of his younger brother, taken as the two navigated grief, care, and renewal following their mother’s death.