Seeing with Tenderness

Ngoc Minh Ngo is a renowned garden photographer whose work captures the natural world with both precision and soul. She's intentional and inspiring to watch work. When she came to photograph Floret's rose preservation project for her new book, Roses In The Garden, I got a chance to talk with her about how personal history shapes artistic vision.

Ngoc's story begins with profound loss. Her father was a colonel in the South Vietnamese Army, caught up in what she describes as a war far more complex than anything portrayed in the media. He was also an amateur photographer who loved documenting their family. When they were forced to flee Vietnam, their trusted housekeeper burned all those photographs and films to ensure their safety.

Ngoc was a teenager when she learned what had happened. She calls it "the greatest sense of loss" she's ever experienced and created a numbness that stayed with her for years. And on some subconscious level believes that experience led her to photography.

In California, her father became an avid gardener, particularly drawn to roses. Throughout her life, her parents had taught her lessons of tenderness and care, values that shaped how she approached her own work. Her father died in the springtime of the year, just before his roses could bloom one last time. So Ngoc began photographing roses as a way to keep him with her. Sharing the beauty she wished they could have experienced together. Roses in The Garden is dedicated to him.

"I think that beauty is so important. It's not superficial," Ngoc says. "It is something that we all need in our lives because the world is very complex and the world can be very hard and harsh and violent. But it can also be really beautiful. And it is good to be reminded of that."