©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

It is with pleasure that the jurors announce the 2024 Lenscratch Student Prize Honorable Mention Winner, Anh Nguyen. Nguyen was selected for her project, The Kitchen God Series and is currently attending The Honorable Mention Winner receives: $250 Cash Award and a Lenscratch t-shirt and tote.

For me, the Kitchen God Series was an immediate stand out in the final round of jurying for the Lenscratch Student Prize. The color, light, and staging of objects and people are active and alluring. In this body of work, Nguyen utilizes these visual devices to reframe concepts, beliefs, and traditions related to her heritage. Through a documentary style and particular attention given to cuisine, she considers how she and other young, Vietnamese individuals define themselves and adapt mythology and cultural ritual & performance to their lives. – Daniel George

An enormous thank you to our jurors: Aline Smithson, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lenscratch, Educator and Artist, Daniel George, Submissions Editor of Lenscratch, Educator and Artist, Linda Alterwitz, Art + Science Editor of Lenscratch and Artist, Kellye Eisworth, Managing Editor of Lenscratch, Educator and Artist, Alexa Dilworth, Independent Writer, Editor, Curator, Former Publishing and Awards Director; Senior Editor, CDS Books Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Kris Graves, Director of Kris Graves Projects, photographer and publisher based in New York and London, Elizabeth Cheng Krist, Former Senior Photo Editor with National Geographic magazine and founding member of the Visual Thinking Collective, Hamidah Glasgow, Director of the Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, CO, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Artist and Founder of the Curated Fridge, Samantha Johnston, Executive Director of the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Drew Leventhal, Artist and Publisher, winner of the 2022 Lenscratch Student Prize, Allie Tsubota, Artist and Educator, winner of the 2021 Lenscratch Student Prize, Raymond Thompson, Jr., Artist and Educator, winner of the 2020 Lenscratch Student Prize, Guanyu Xu, Artist and Educator, winner of the 2019 Lenscratch Student Prize,  Shawn Bush, Artist, Educator, and Publisher, winner of the 2017 Lenscratch Student Prize.

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

Anh Nguyen is a Vietnamese photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work explores how cultures shift and adapt outside of their original contexts, through unpacking rituals around food. Anh graduated from Boston University with a B.S. in photojournalism and completed the Documentary and Visual Journalism program at the International Center of Photography in 2024.

Follow on Instagram – @minhanhnguyenn

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

The Kitchen God Series

In Vietnamese popular mythology, every family is said to have three kitchen gods that reside in their house. Altars are typically placed by the stove so the gods can always watch over to ensure family members treat each other well and all matters of the home are in order.

The Kitchen God Series explores the imaginative landscape of myth by looking at how young Vietnamese people create homes of their own in New York City. By unpacking cultural rituals as performance, my generation finds ways to make traditions part of our own lives.

My practice is heavily informed by personal storytelling. I draw my voice from the language of Asian subcultures and see it as being in conversation with other contemporary photographers whose work, I believe, is striving to subvert the traditional Western gaze on identity. I am inspired by Trinh T. Minh Ha’s notion of “speaking nearby” which avoids the assertion of representation in visual work about identity.

I tell cultural stories through food, viewing it as a lens to explore the constantly changing definitions of cultural identity. Somewhere between documentary and fiction, my work is inspired by the playfulness, and sometimes absurdity, of mythology, rituals, and traditions, and how they are interpreted in a modern context.

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

Daniel George: Congratulations on the Honorable Mention for the Lenscratch Student Prize!!! To begin, tell us how photography came into your life. What led to your interest in the medium?

Anh Nguyen: I think I’ve always been a curious person and loved to ask questions. When I was a kid, I was really bad at painting and drawing so naturally when I discovered photography it just clicked.

I studied photojournalism in college and what drew me to the medium beyond just something I was passionate about is that it feels like a holistic way to communicate. The play between truth and fiction is super interesting to me.

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

DG: How about The Kitchen God Series? When and how did that work start?

AN: That work started during my year at the International Center of Photography where I was part of the “Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism” program. During the year, we had to develop a long-term project.

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

DG: The vibrant quality and lighthearted performance were what initially drew me to this work. At least, they functioned as access points before I really dove into the conceptual underpinnings of the project. In your statement, you write that these images question the “confines of identity through playful interventions.” Could you elaborate on this idea?

AN: I draw a lot of inspiration from personal storytelling because I strongly believe in the idea that what is most personal is most universal. As I began to unpack the idea of traditions and the expectations my parents had on me to carry on traditional Vietnamese values, I felt the pressure of defining for myself what it means to feel neither fully Vietnamese of American. This space of “limbo” brings a lot of uncertainty but I also think it’s allowed me to take a step back and see that those binaries are completely arbitrary. So when I think about the “playful interventions,” I’m thinking about how people with similar backgrounds and experiences to mine are subverting the strict notions that you can only have traditions or modernity, be a part of one culture or another, and overall just how restricting the notion of “identity” can be.

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

DG: Would you mind sharing your research methodology for this work?

AN: It began with photographing people closest to me. Because I come from a background of photojournalism, I often gravitated towards stories where I could at least try to be an objective viewer. I struggled with capturing intimacy and the things and people I know best. I began to photograph my friends (all of whom are either international students or first-generation Vietnamese Americans) in their homes, challenging myself to notice things about them that I never did before. It was the ways that they decorated their homes and the “traditions” they adapted in their lives that made me think about the idea of how traditions evolve outside of their original contexts.

As I was photographing Vietnamese people in New York, the mythology of the Kitchen Gods came to me — these figures that live inside your home and are always watching over — and I realized it was essentially the role I was taking on. That was when I decided to look into the myth as well as rituals performed around the Kitchen Gods (i.e. putting out the offering table on Lunar New Year) and how food plays a role in Vietnamese traditions.

The images essentially became three categories: photographs of Vietnamese people in New York in their homes, conceptual still lives revolving around food and rituals, and self-portraits exploring my childhood memories with traditions.

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

DG: On your website, you share the legend of Trong Cao, Thi Nhi, and Pham Lang—contextualizing the rituals that this work addresses. Would you talk more about the ways in which this project considers how younger generations interpret and adapt to tradition?

AN: The story of Trong Cao, Pham Lang, and Thi Nhi is the myth of how they became eternalized as Kitchen Gods. Growing up, I never knew the names of the deities but only referred to them collectively as “Ong Tao” — which is the worship name of the main male figure of the story. I was intrigued by how absurd the story was, but also by the fact that as I began doing research and asking family members to recollect the story, no one could remember the name of the woman — because she was mostly unnamed.

I thought about this idea of how she was forgotten about and essentially cast aside. But rather than being a tragic thing, it allowed her to see things more realistically and not clouded by any bias. This translated to my own perceptions of culture and traditions. As part of a younger generation that has decided to move away from home, we’re able to see traditions, such as the worship of the Kitchen Gods, and evaluate whether it belongs in our lives. This way, we can confidently say what traditions we value and how we are making our own paths.

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

DG: I’d like to hear about your educational experience. How did your creative practice evolve while you were in school?

AN: Being part of the “Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism” program, I was often asked to think about the idea of “truth” in photography. I think the subversion of what “documentary” means and looks like was what really inspired this process for me. Being surrounded by so many inspiring mentors and peers, and seeing my work in the larger context of the history of photography, inspired me to be intentional about what I create.

Having a “photographic voice” was something I was really concerned about going into the year at ICP. I eventually learned that a voice naturally emerges if the work is a reflection of myself.

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

DG: Being a student can be exhausting, and burnout is real. What motivates you to continue creating?

AN: I take a lot of inspiration from cooking, food, and music. Nothing exists in a vacuum so it’s always great to enjoy the things I love to photograph without having to think about photographing it.

I think my photographic process takes a lot of inspiration from my cooking process.

Growing up, I was taught that food was about experience, not precision. Because my family never measured when we cook, a dish tastes different every time you make it. My approach to cooking is generally to prepare the ingredients I have in mind for a dish and know what to expect for the result, but to get there it takes a dash of the right spice or the addition of herbs in the right order to make it feel just right. I feel this way about my photography. A lot of times I have an idea for something in my mind but I can’t get it to translate right into a photograph, and other times the “right” photograph comes about as an accident. I start with a general idea and set the stage for what I want, but to get the right photograph I have to experiment with what’s available and find joy in the process not the result.

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series

©Anh Nguyen, from The Kitchen God Series