Advertising 
Story: Uyen Ly
Photos: Duong Minh Long
Twenty-two years after the death of legendary musician Trinh Cong Son on April 1, 2001, this February, fans were reunited with their hero via 35 photos by photographer Duong Minh Long, displayed at the exhibition “Trinh Cong Son – First reunion”.
This exhibition is the “First reunion” for Duong Minh Long (DML). Thirty-three years after taking the first picture of Trinh Cong Son (TCS), the photographer finally revealed that he has thousands of photos of the late-composer, but was only releasing 35 images to the public. “Don’t be impatient with DML,” wrote journalist Huy Duc. “He is a bold connoisseur, so a dozen photos are enough to make a difference.”
DUONG MINH LONG
Born in 1962 in Hanoi
1975, took his first photos of Hanoi.
1980 – 1982, performed military service
1986 – 1994, worked as a press photographer in Europe
1991 – 1998, became a photojournalist for Lao Dong Newspaper
1993, impressed readers with a series of photo essays about Russia’s political upheavals.
Duong Minh Long and Trinh Cong Son
The late musician’s private life remains mysterious, like a luminous house that can only be admired from afar through a small window. Only one “stranger” had the opportunity to step inside that house, live and breathe the same atmosphere, witness the musician’s encounters, and capture his everyday moments over time – and that was DML.
During his 11 years with TCS, including nearly five years sharing the same house, DML saved over 9,000 precious documentary photos of the talented musician. “TCS was a person who craved friendships,” DML explained. Most of TCS’s photographs depict him with artist friends, such as the late musicians Van Cao and Thanh Tung, the late photographer Vo An Ninh, the late writer Nguyen Quang Sang, the poet Nguyen Duy, or his singer muses Khanh Ly, Hong Nhung, and his sister Trinh Vinh Trinh, who found him out of love and respect for his incredible talent.
DML recalls meeting TCS for the first time on October 25, 1990, the last day of his photo exhibition about Russia. “I have loved Mr. Son’s music since I was very young,” he recalled. “The first album I bought was Son Ca 7 featuring Khanh Ly’s voice.”
When he finally met the man in person, DML immediately thought of photographing him. Between 1991 and 1992, while still working as a photojournalist in Moscow for Lao Dong Newspaper, DML visited Vietnam several times to photograph TCS. In 1993, he returned permanently, continuing to photograph TCS and other artistic figures.
TCS is someone DML greatly admires. The musician had always admired DML’s work and assisted him with many photographs. Whenever DML offered, he always got up early and dressed appropriately for the shots, despite going to bed late many nights after having fun with friends or attending music nights. “As meticulous as he was, TCS never asked to review the photos I took,” DML explained.
The musician regarded DML as a close brother to whom he could confide his “private world” of joys and sorrows. On some nights, DML listened to TCS talk until daybreak. On others, he “escorted” the musician to meet with his “muses”. TCS “drank the drunkenness of love” without expecting anything in return. As for the musician’s romantic affairs, DML stated that he has enough material to create an album about TCS and his girlfriends but will never release this album out of respect for his friend’s personal life. There are people to whom TCS had made deep promises, people who simply wanted to take care of him for the rest of his life, even if they didn’t live with him. Eventually, the musician chose solitude. Perhaps his emotional subtleties made him a musical legend, able to write profoundly philosophical melodies and lyrics.
Solo exhibitions
1984 – 2004: held 25 solo photo exhibitions in Vietnam and Europe.
2007 – 2018: held exhibitions in Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, USA, and Russia
Photography projects from 1990 to 2022:
World Heritage Sites in Vietnam:
Hoi An: 1991 – 1999
Ha Long Bay: 1992 – 2009
Hue: 1993 – 2008
Hanoi: 1990 – 2022
Saigon: 1991 – 2021
Vietnamese celebrities:
1988 – 2022: photographed 1,725 artistic figures and other celebrities from various professions.
One who made history for the future
DML is described as a “bold connoisseur” by journalist Huy Duc. The moniker comes as no surprise – at the age of 13, using his parents’ household registration book as a mortgage, he bought an Olympus-pen EF2 camera in order to capture his first images of his mother, sister, and Hanoi’s streets. In nearly half a century of holding a camera, DML spent most of his money and time pursuing “foreshadowing” photography projects. Whenever he started a project, he would imagine the photos’ future and historical value in 20 to 30 years’ time.
About his documentary photography projects, DLM stated: “On a scale of 100, capturing the moment only accounts for 1 point, the remaining 99 come from storage and preservation.” He always meticulously records the names of the characters, the shooting dates, and other events that occur during the photography session, storing his photos in a scientific, meticulous, and systematic manner. As a result, TCS entrusted all of his memorabilia to DML. The photographer preserved this legacy and gave it to the family of TCS’s sister, singer Trinh Vinh Trinh, in 2021. So far, despite moving 28 times, DML has kept and preserved 950 kg of film intact. However, he has only released 1/10 of these archives. The rest will be published when the time comes.
Despite being over 60 years old, DML will publish a number of photo albums from the 1990s later this year, including a series of books about the late musician TCS, Hanoi, Hue, Saigon, Hoi An, and others, to commemorate an important milestone in his career as a talented documentary photographer.
