2 - Bridges

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   A second thematic sample of 20 pictures of bridges from "montagnard" country. Starting with the fragile liana bridge to the imposing French construction of concrete and steel on the river Lagna. The first one only allowing the crossing of walking men, the second one allowing cars, trucks, trains and later on entire armored divisions to reach the heart of the Southeast Asian highlands 1. As soon as the human being, then the foreign human being takes root in the highlands, bridges are built. There are all types, even frivolous as these small leisure footbridges built on the touristic walks of the waterfalls, such as the Cam-Ly waterfall, near Dalat.

   This tool of communication can behave like an easy metaphor: do these bridges act as a “bridge between two peoples”, mediators between two cultures - the "civilized", whether European or Vietnamese, one and the Mountain dwellers? These bridges most likely represent the human mark stepping over Nature’s autonomous itinerary which it dominates with its autonomous trajectory. A flexible and perishable way in the case of autochthonous liana bridges, rigid and indestructible (or hardly even by air bombing as the Americans were to learn when trying to stop the stream of North Vietnamese communist regiments!) in the case of those initially build by the French.

  Let’s end on a lighter note, illustrated by this Jean-Dominique Lajoux’s photo of a graffiti made by young people («Leak and Thik», were they lovers in contact with French language?) on the wooden planks of a bridge’s roadway. Here Montagnards spontaneously find again the segmented writing support on palm tree leaves frequently used all over Southeast Asia. A musical ending, also, with a video of the pop singer of Bahnar origin, Siu Black, who, as every good musician knows, obviously holds the bridge, «Has anybody seen the bridge? » 2 for no negligible device.

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1 - We borrow this expression proposed by Jean Michaud and others especially in the Historical Dictionary of Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif, Oxford 2006.

2 - Led Zeppelin – House of the Holy – The Crunge – Atlantic, 1973.