Studio Art
Remembering Pipo Nguyen-Duy
The Oberlin community mourns the death of Pipo Nguyen-Duy, professor of studio art and photography, who served as the chair of the Department of Studio Art at Oberlin College and Conservatory.
Pipo was born in Hue, Vietnam, in 1962 and came to the United States as a refugee in 1975, at the age of 13. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics at Carleton College and a master of arts in photography and a master of fine arts in photography at the University of New Mexico. He joined the Oberlin faculty in 1998 and taught photography in the Department of Studio Art, where generations of students learned to shoot, develop, and print their own film in a darkroom community he built and sustained.
His own work, including AnOther Western, AnOther Expedition: Monet’s Garden, The Garden, and (My) East of Eden, returned again and again to questions of displacement, memory, and belonging. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in photography and received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and Oberlin’s B. Wade and Jane B. White Fellowship in the Humanities. His photographs are held in public collections in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Share a remembrance
To commemorate Pipo’s enduring impact, students, colleagues, alumni, and friends are invited to share their memories of him. Messages are reviewed before they are posted, and the full collection will be given to his family.