Amerasians

The Vietnam War left over a hundred thousand babies of American soldiers and Vietnamese women. By the mid 1980's thousands were homeless, living on the streets of Saigon, or foraging for food in the countryside. Finally the Amerasian Homecoming Act was passed and many waited at the American Transit Center before leaving on planes for the US. Those that left hoped to find their fathers. Now, two decades later, several hundred are still left in Vietnam, and will probably never be able to come to the US because of the ultra tight US laws barring their exit. Those who are in the US have made a home for themselves, are bonding as a group, and trying to help those left in Vietnam to come "home."

Born and raised in Hong Kong, the daughter of an American journalist, San Francisco-based photographer Catherine Karnow seems destined to have travel and photo-journalism at the center of her life. She studied photography in high school, and graduated Brown University with honors degrees in Comparative Literature and Semiotics. After a brief career as a filmmaker �¢?? her film Brooklyn Bridge premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 1984 �¢?? she turned her attention to photography full time in 1986. Catherine has covered Australian Aborigines; Bombay film stars; victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam; Russian �¢??Old Believers�¢?? in Alaska; Greenwich, Connecticut high society; and an Albanian farm family. In 1994, she was the only non-Vietnamese photo-journalist to accompany General Giap on his historic first return to the forest encampment in the northern Vietnam highlands from which he plotted the battle of Dien Bien Phu. She also gained unprecedented access to Prince Charles for her 2006 National Geographic feature, �¢??Not Your Typical Radical.�¢?? Her work appears in National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, French & German GEO and other international publications. She has also participated in several Day in the Life series, Passage to Vietnam, and Women in the Material World. Catherine Karnow is known for her vibrant, emotional and sensitive style of photographing people.