Dy Duyen
To begin the interview, introduce yourself to our readers. What is Dy Duyen's photography in a nutshell?
Dy Duyen is a photographer living in Sai Gon, Viet Nam. She mostly works in portrait area.
How did you decide to become a photographer?
I don’t remember exactly when or how I decided to become a photographer because it just came to me in the most natural way. The first time I bought a camera is when I was in college, studying graphic design. And I bought it just because my teacher told me that it’s gonna be useful for my study. At that time, I had no idea about photography, I didn’t even know how to use a camera and I never touched one before. But the first time I took pictures with that camera, I fell in love immediately. It was magical to me, it opened a new world in my heart. When I looked at the world through a camera, I felt like I was Alice in wonderland. From that moment, I just kept taking pictures and I never had to decide about my career, I never wondered about it. It just feels like I was born to meet photography and to take a life-long journey with it.
What can you tell us about your artistic process? Looking at your photographs, they appear carefully orchestrated and precise. It seems like you know exactly what you want to achieve.
I think that now I truly know what I want to achieve in my career or in pictures that I want to create. My process for creating a photoshoot always begins with ideas then I draw them, think about who I want to work with, a place to shoot or props that I need to have, I contact people, find the props and finally arrange a day to shoot. Good ideas and great imagination are important but I think the key to make ideas become (almost) reality, is practice. At the beginning you will fail many times and be disappointed with yourself, but over time, with regular practice (with different ideas, places, lights…), you can easily visualize the process and the result in reality.
You have quite a following online, around 40 000 followers on Instagram alone. How do you see the role of social media in promoting your art and what do you think its effects are on the overall way artists nowadays approach their work? It seems like you have more critics and also a more direct way to communicate with consumers.
To be honest, I don’t think much about social media. I think it’s like my online portfolio, a website to update my works and to connect with clients. But it’s easier, faster and more convenient.
You are the first Vietnamese artist we are interviewing for our website. Can you tell our readers about Vietnamese art scene and specifically what is that space like for female artists?
As a female artist living in Sai Gon, I’ve received a lot of support from people around me. In my opinion, the art scene here hasn’t developed much yet but it’s growing.
When we look at your photos, we see an artist with a clearly defined style. If you look at your photography chronologically, how did this current style develop? What are some artists that have influenced your ideas about aesthetics?
My photography style might seem clear now but at the beginning, like everybody on their way to discover who they really are or what they really want to do, I was confused too. In my first years, I used to use Photoshop to create pictures that have fantasy vibes and strong feelings/impression. I retouched pictures by adding textures and effects like smoke, cloud…I even edited models’ faces to have a perfect look. But as I grow older, my view in life has changed, so my vision in photography has changed too. Now I like simple, gentle and emotional things. I rarely use Photoshop and mostly just use Lightroom to retouch colors. There is not much of a difference between before and after images except the colors. I used to seek for perfect looks and now I only pursue light and emotion in photography. Actually I don’t have any artists that have influenced my ideas about aesthetics, the way I think of life affects me the most the way I want to create in photography but I like Nguan – a photographer from Singapore, I like the way he sees life in his pictures: simple, gentle and so delicate.
You can see more of here work at www.dyduyen.com
