DEPARTURE (2005)
‘I hope to earn more money if I graduate. Then I can help my family escape poverty.’ These words, from the Vietnamese student Toan, are the basis for DEPARTURE (2005). According to Phuoc Bui Huu, they characterize the situation in the Vietnamese countryside, where one of the children in a family studying is the only chance for a better life. Toan, 22 years old, is in his second year at the academy for economics in Ho Chi Minh City. He spends most of his free time in front of the television in his room. He has no money to go out for entertainment. Phuoc Bui Huu photographed Toan on the campus and with his family in the countryside. In his way he wants to let us see that Toan, like so many Vietnamese students, ‘is on his way to an uncertain future, with almost empty hands’.
