The War That Didn't End

What one life taught me about Agent Orange, time, and staying with a story

I first photographed Nu almost twenty years ago. I remember her rocking beneath a staircase at Friendship Village on the outskirts of Hanoi, humming the same tune over and over again. It was easy to miss unless you slowed down.

Friendship Village is both a vocational training center and a home for children and veterans living with disabilities linked to Agent Orange, a herbicide used by the US military during the Vietnam War. The chemical was sprayed to clear jungle cover where enemy forces were believed to be hiding. What made it especially destructive was the dioxin it contained, which persists in the environment and in the human body. Decades later, its effects are still present.

I moved to Vietnam in 2006 as a young photojournalist, and this was the first story I wanted to tackle. I wanted people my age, and younger, to understand that the impact of war doesn't stop with a death count or a history lesson. It carries forward, quietly, into families and daily life.

My first attempt was a broad story. I spent a week photographing at a center in Ba Vi where 130 children lived, many with severe physical and mental disabilities associated with Agent Orange exposure in their families. That work was published in Newsweek as a multimedia piece. But once it ran, the media cycle moved on. Another story replaced it, as always.

That left me feeling unsatisfied. I started to feel that if I wanted to tell something that mattered, I needed to slow it down and make it more personal. Instead of trying to show everything, I needed to stay with one story.

That's what brought me back to Friendship Village, with my friend Mrs. Thuy, as her students call her. She was an English teacher who became a kind of guide for me when I first moved to Vietnam. She helped me understand the culture, the rhythms of life, and the realities of being an outsider.

With her help, I was allowed to live inside the center for a week. That's when I heard the humming beneath a staircase in one of the dormitories. I followed the sound and found Nu. She was about fourteen at the time. Autistic, blind, partially deaf, and non-verbal. Something about her isolation stopped me. I decided to tell the story of the legacy of war through her daily life.

I spent the week documenting her routine. Through conversations with staff and villagers, I learned more about her family history. Her grandfather had fought in the American War and had been exposed to Agent Orange. Her father was born with cognitive impairments believed to be linked to that exposure. Nu was born into that reality.

When plans were made for her to return to her grandparents, Thuy and I visited their home. It was immediately clear they didn't have the means to care for her. Leaving her there felt irresponsible.

We worked together to convince the center to allow Nu to stay indefinitely. We agreed to cover her annual fees so she could remain somewhere she would receive meals, hygiene, medical care, and stability.

From that point on, Thuy and I were permanently linked through Nu. A twenty-eight-year-old American photographer and a middle-aged Vietnamese schoolteacher, connected by a responsibility neither of us had planned for.

Yesterday, we made our annual Lunar New Year trip to bring Nu back to her village for the holiday. It marked nearly twenty years of returning, year after year.

I started my photography journey discouraged by the limits of media, but never by the power of photography itself. You never know where a project will lead you, or how long it will stay with you. Humanity can be careless and cruel, but it can also be generous and deeply human.

We love you, Nu. See you next year.

To learn more and donate to the Friendship Village please visit vietnamfriendship.org