What does Vietnam mean to Vietnamese that live far away from home? In Rocco Ho’s first exhibition titled Photographing Distant Memories - Những Ký Ức Xa Vời, he captures the longing of home and its memories while underscoring an enduring sense of Vietnamese pride abroad.
Rocco (Quoc Anh) Ho (b. 2003, Hanoi, Vietnam) is a Vietnamese photographer currently based in New York City. Working across the genres of portraiture and fashion photography, Ho examines themes of cultural identity, displacement, and intergenerational belonging. His practice is cinematic, emotionally charged, and deeply personal. His photographs are anchored by a desire to preserve memory, confront in-betweenness, and quietly assert his place within a shifting global landscape.
Photographing Distant Memories - Những Ký Ức Xa Vời explores how cultural memory persists with tenderness, quiet endurance, and a deep sense of pride. More than documents of Vietnamese lives lived away from home, his images function as a meditative reflection on what it means to be Vietnamese. He captures the in-between moments of Vietnam, the fleeting gestures and everyday rituals you never think to cherish until distance makes them visible: conversations shared on red plastic stools, hotpots with your family, and wishing upon good fortunes in pagodas.
The resulting images become a bridge of connection between two places, allowing Vietnam to reappear with cinematic texture and emotional resonance.
Sitting for coffee or watching the pavement life unfold from a plastic stool represents the most ordinary moments of Vietnamese daily life. Ho could easily do these same things in New York: buying a latte at Starbucks, or sitting and observing passersby at Union Square or Washington Square Park. “But instead of the bustle and urgency of New York,” he says, “I find a sense of calm—of belonging that comes from carrying home within me, even in a city not my own.”
Perhaps Ho’s photography is not only about longing—for home, for Vietnam, for Hanoi—but about how identity is something one carries everywhere. It is this sense of self that anchors movement with intention and pride in an increasingly globalized world.
“I am a child of Vietnam no matter where I am in this ever changing world,” says Ho.
About Photographing Distant Memories - Những Ký Ức Xa Vời
- Venue: Nguyen Wahed Gallery, 504 E 12th St, New York, NY, 10009
- Date: 12/19/2025 - 01/04/2026