Vietnam Posters: The David Heather Collection [Paperback]

You will like this book but if you are a scholar or a serious collector you may be a little disappointed. This is a coffee table book not true scholarly analysis. The essay at the front of the book is little more than fluffy description of key historical periods providing some context for those unfamiliar with the historical events.

The 4 chapters (War & Peace, Uncle Ho, Everlasting Spirit, and Tomorrow Begins Today) break up the collection into distinct parts but don't provide much meaning. There is way too much we love uncle Ho and way too little of subjects like Social Evils, Condom Usage, 2 Child Policy, and Corruption. This book wasn't even published under the auspice of the Vietnamese government with blessing of censors. Why stick to such the sappy flag waving and dedicate so much space the "we love uncle ho" stuff.]

From an academic perspective this book comes up short compared to a truly scholarly undertaking like Political Posters in Central and Eastern Europe 1945-95. This book is completely lacking any nuanced analysis of the social context, collective symbols, historical influences, and other interpretations. There is so much space in the poster arrangement that there surely was some space to explain some things about its meaning. Even if the introductory essay itself was stretched out into the poster arrangement to provide context it would have been more interesting.

From a collectors standpoint this is somewhat of a letdown. A crucial error was made in not including the artist's attribution and year with each poster. This book does follow the common poster arrangement like the Tranh Co Dong Tuyen Chon (Propaganda Poster Collection) 1996 put out by the Ministry of Culture and Information Fine Arts Department. But at least they included the Artist and Date if not the English and French translation of the slogans.

The Date information is very important in understanding the context of the poster. Consider a poster image of the governments agenda even images of uncle Ho may be viewed considerably differently by the youth of 20047 vs the youth of 1975. This book displays the posters from 1975 alongside those from 2004 with no distinction. Only careful study of the artist signature or the campaign dates can one discern the period.

Further details on each of the pieces would be of further interest to serious collectors. To their credit the publishers very faithfully rendered the images of the posters right down to the gnarled corners where we can see the poster was retackled up the wall several times. Some of the pieces are clearly printed posters. Others, I am guessing, are original art work. And clearly some are block prints. These are all gritty details that collectors would like to know.