By Bảo Long

Unlike many photographers who visit Việt Nam, Peter Steinhauer refused to take any images of the remnants of the war with the US, even though the path offered an easier, more marketable way to build a career here. 

Instead, he chose a different lens to view the country.

Arriving in Hà Nội in 1993, Steinhauer had just graduated from art school. His plan was simple: stay for two months, taking pictures of the landscape and portraits in the hope of selling his photos to a gallery. But the plan changed.

“I think I still have my journal that I kept in my second week here. I wrote that I felt like this was home. This is where I'm supposed to be. This is my purpose, and I'm gonna live here.”

The vibrant life on the streets and the architecture charmed the young artist, but his deepest affinity was for the mountains in the north. Being from Colorado, he intensely “gravitated to the north of Việt Nam” because the terrain made him feel “really at home”.

He gained access to sites like Bản Giốc Waterfall, right on the Chinese border, where there were zero tourists. The photographer soon realised he had the opportunity that few other photographers had at that moment, to document a Việt Nam largely unaffected by the outside world.

The 59-year-old said: “I wanted to do my own small, humble type of way to start a new narrative and to show what this country was about. I wanted to show that, instead of this 20-year span of war with the US. It’s a culture that’s actually almost 4,000 years old.” 

To execute this vision, Steinhauer set a rigorous artistic standard for himself. He quickly realised his work had to be more than snapshot photography, committing to a monumental act of historical preservation as Hà Nội was changing every day at that moment. 

“I had a large, ambitious idea to call myself the Eugène Atget of Việt Nam,” he said. 

“I knew this country was changing, so my goal was to document the city, particularly Hà Nội, in the same style he documented Paris.”

But more than the architecture or the unique landscape, for Steinhauer, his work becomes a testament to the internal fortitude of the Vietnamese people. His focus shifted to the human element, seeing their character as the country’s most phenomenal feature. 

He added: “The strength of the Vietnamese people, to me, is phenomenal. Like what the Vietnamese have gone through and what they continue to go through and struggle and how they overcome and survive.

“They have this tremendous ability to go forward and put things behind, whether it’s a forgiveness or not, I’m not quite sure, but it’s a way of keeping peace and going forward and seemingly not harbouring bitterness.”

The resolute choice to never photograph war remnants was not a mindless career decision, but a deep ethical discipline. His father, a doctor stationed in Đà Nẵng during the war, had returned with thousands of slides documenting his medical work.

“I saw the real Việt Nam through my dad’s slides,” Steinhauer said, adding that the visceral reality of trauma, people with jaws blown away by gunfire, and it left a permanent mark. 

“There was something that repulsed me about that. I refused to watch, like Hamburger Hill, I’ve never seen any of [films featuring the war in Việt Nam]."

It’s this resilient spirit he seeks to capture, a Việt Nam defined not by what it lost, but by its ability to constantly move forward. He recognised his work needed to be an active part of the healing process, that he needed to be part of the process to get people out of that pain. 

This driving motivation led him and his wife to establish the Vietnam Society. The organisation’s goal is to utilise art and culture to build understanding and bridges between Americans, Vietnamese and the Vietnamese-American community. 

By consciously rejecting the easy path, Peter Steinhauer created a far more enduring body of works. His photography became not just a portfolio, but a vital piece of cultural diplomacy and a historical testament. 

Through his monumental work, Steinhauer helps ensure that the majesty of its mountains, the elegance of its architecture and the indomitable spirit of its people are never forgotten in the global conversation about Việt Nam. VNS