Berlin based photographer Kiên Hoàng Lê was born in Hanoi, Northern Vietnam, grew up in Bogensee, East German and has lived internationally. In 2012 he was a staff photographer with the German Newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung F.A.Z.In 2013 he studied a BA in Advanced Visual Storytelling at the Danish School of Media and Journalism, Denmark and finished his studies in Photography at the University of applied science Hannover. He prefers working on long-term projects revolving around perception and creation of identity. Kiên won VG-Bildkunst, 2015, and was shortlisted for HENRI NANNEN AWARD, 2014. He has exhibited in German as well as abroad where he was part of a group exhibition ‘Making Heimat’, architecture Biennale, Venice, 2016, among others.
Kiên Hoàng Lê was invited by the programme committee to participate in the 2017 Copenhagen Photo Festival: Photo City with his project ‘Where is home?’ Observing the disappearing past’. Kiên’s project consists of a personals stories about his family past in a seismographic study of history, cultural change and diaspora that already hold place in our minds as a ‘by-product’ or wars in the past and nowadays.
Leaving Vietnam at the age of five, being Vietnamese in Germany and a German in Vietnam Kiên questions his relation to the world, while carrying the memory of the travel moments , and the transitions from the present, connecting to a broad family panorama of encounters. His search leading to a haunting photographic study of togetherness and family tradition. The vigorous observation of faces, little gestures and everyday life putting together different layer of his families essential core.
