Kingston Weekender

LOST FRAMES Featured in Kingston Weekender

Kingston-based artist Philippe Trinh shares the story behind LOST FRAMES, an ongoing archival photography project exploring memory, identity, and belonging through rediscovered Vietnam War-era photographs.

Article: Kingstonweekender

Beyond the Battlefield

A Kingston Artist Unearths a Different Side of Vietnam

Kingston-based artist Philippe Trinh explores memory, identity, and the everyday lives captured in rediscovered Vietnam War-era photographs through his ongoing archival project, LOST FRAMES.

Through his ongoing project LOST FRAMES, the Kingston-based artist explores memory, identity, and a different side of the Vietnam War.

For more than 15 years, Philippe Trinh has called Kingston, New York, home. A multidisciplinary creative with a background spanning fashion, photography, video, writing, and creative direction, Trinh has spent much of his career telling stories through images. His latest project, however, takes a more personal turn.

LOST FRAMES, an ongoing archival photography project, began with a collection of rediscovered photographic negatives taken by American servicemen during the Vietnam War. Rather than focusing on the familiar images of combat and destruction, Trinh became interested in the quieter moments captured between them: everyday street scenes, friendships, travel, and ordinary encounters.

These photographs, many taken by unknown photographers, offer a glimpse into a Vietnam rarely seen in traditional accounts of the war.

A Personal Search for Belonging

As a second-generation Vietnamese American, Trinh's connection to Vietnam has largely been shaped by family stories and inherited memories. His parents fled Vietnam during the war, leaving behind much of their former lives, including family photographs.

That absence became an important part of LOST FRAMES.

Through photographs taken by strangers, Trinh began discovering places, people, and moments that existed during the same years his own family's history was unfolding.

The project brings together two very different perspectives: that of American servicemen experiencing Vietnam for the first time, and that of a Vietnamese American looking back at a country that is part of his identity, but one he has never fully known.

At its heart, LOST FRAMES is about belonging — the complicated relationship between where we come from, the stories we inherit, and the places we call home.

Rediscovering History Through Photography

Much of Trinh's process begins with sourcing original photographic negatives, many of which have been separated from their albums or discarded over time. He researches, scans, restores, and prints the images, carefully arranging them into a visual narrative.

Rather than presenting the photographs chronologically, Trinh sequences them through emotion and experience. Moments of arrival give way to routine, friendship, uncertainty, and departure.

The result is a collection that feels less like a traditional historical archive and more like a personal journey through fragments of another time.

As the project continues to develop, Trinh has also been expanding his photographic practice through programs at the Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) in Kingston. His recent involvement includes photographic printing instruction focused on fine-art printing techniques, as well as a photobook workshop exploring editing, sequencing, and the development of photographic narratives.

These experiences have helped shape how LOST FRAMES is being prepared for both exhibition and eventual publication.

An Exhibition in the Works

Trinh is currently developing LOST FRAMES into an exhibition, with a Kingston venue yet to be determined, that will bring the project to the public for the first time.

The exhibition is envisioned in three parts, exploring how the Vietnam War was reported, experienced, and remembered.

The first section examines how Americans encountered the war through the media, using historical LIFE magazine covers. The second presents a curated collection of black-and-white photographs recovered from original negatives, offering a quieter perspective on everyday life during the conflict.

The final section brings the story closer to home, connecting the war's lasting human consequences to Kingston through the Matteson family and their personal archive of letters, photographs, and wartime correspondence.

Together, the three sections aim to create a conversation between public history, personal memory, and the experiences that often remain outside the historical record.

Bringing the Conversation Home to Kingston

Community has long been an important part of Trinh's creative life. Through his work and projects in the Hudson Valley, he has continued to explore ways of bringing people together through art, storytelling, and shared experiences.

With LOST FRAMES, he hopes to extend those connections through exhibitions, artist conversations, and opportunities for people to reflect on their own family histories.

The project also arrives at a time when conversations surrounding identity, immigration, and belonging continue to resonate across generations.

For Trinh, the photographs are more than artifacts from the past. They offer a way to revisit history through a different perspective, connecting stories that might otherwise remain forgotten.

And perhaps, in the process of looking through someone else's memories, finding a little more of his own.

About the Artist

Philippe Trinh is a Kingston-based multidisciplinary artist and creative director working across photography, video, writing, and visual storytelling. His ongoing project, LOST FRAMES, explores memory, identity, and belonging through rediscovered Vietnam War-era photographs.

Learn more at miltstudios.com/lost-frames.