A Window—, 2022-2024
Ink on archival Hahnemühle bamboo paper mounted on aluminum, artist frame-engineered bamboo, 13 x 16 ⅛ x 2 3/16 in

Image courtesy of the artist.
Image credit: © 2024 Christie’s Images Ltd.

Maiko Mamekiyo, 2024-2025
Ink on canvas, 53 x 67 in

Image courtesy of the artist.

A visit to the Camas Public Library to view what was published on Tuesday, April 9, 1991, 2025
Ink on canvas, 26 ½ x 40 ¼ in

Image courtesy of the artist.

Traveling Box, 2022
Ink on archival cotton rag mounted, artist box Japanese ash, Dimensions variable

Image courtesy of Spazio Fonte and the artist.
Image credit: John Chen

Seeing, 2023
Ink on archival cotton rag mounted on aluminum, artist frame hinoki, 48 ⅝ x 60 ⅝ x 2 in

Image courtesy of the artist.
Image credit: Nice Day Photo

memory/

What has been occupying my headspace lately is the memory and function of my family’s restaurant business, especially now, as it stands at a transitory moment. My parents opened Le’s Restaurant in Camas, Washington in 1991. Camas had a distinct sulfurous smell from the nearby paper mill. Luckily, our restaurant sat on the side where the scent wasn’t so strong so the fragrance of my parent’s Vietnamese food dominated the block. At the time, my younger brother Jimmy and I were toddlers playing alongside our parents as they cooked and cared for their customers. The restaurant became a hub where my parents introduced Vietnamese food to the local community. Today, our parents still operate a version of that restaurant in a slightly larger space called Pho Le in East Vancouver, Washington.

During the pandemic years, Jimmy Le—now a chef—began thinking about how to evolve the legacy of my family and their recipes. He wanted to break away from our parent’s way of doing business, but not from its essence. As a motivating prompt for the two of us, I would engage in conversation with Jimmy asking, “How can we carry forward the memories of our childhood and the daily life of our parents’ restaurant into this new chapter?” Or, “How can we create new memories dish by dish?”

Appropriately on our father’s birthday on August 19th, 2021, Jimmy opened Thơm®, a corner pho shop and mini-market in northeast Portland, Oregon. The space we built together is small but intentional where every detail carries a trace of memory or encourages the customer to enjoy the food in front of them and the space around them. For example, a customer could walk past our entrance with greenery done by our Mother, seated to eat a soulful bowl of soup in a hand-thrown ceramic bowl made by Los Angeles-based artist ceramics studio Clay CA, listen to a music list selected by music supervisor Mathieu Schreyer on hi-fi DIY audio speakers from OJAs, drink out of a Peter Shire EXP Pottery mug and look at the artwork that Jimmy made in elementary school that once hung at Le’s Restaurant but reframed to hang in his own space under Isamu Noguchi Akari Light Sculptures dimly lighting the unfussy space. In many ways, Thơm® translates from Vietnamese to English as a pineapple, sweet fragrance, or kiss, and is a sensory tribute to where we came from and where we’re going.

thơm® Portland

Image courtesy of Thơm® and the artist.

line/

Much like choosing the right ingredients for a recipe, I enjoy the journey of scavenging, uncovering, and understanding the elements and the people behind the work. It’s not always about the supply chain, but rather about noticing how daily life, in its mundane and serendipitous moments, reveals itself in the materials and connections that shape the chain of events for what I create. I find joy in expanding the social web of connection. The people I meet along the way, whether fleeting or lasting, have the potential to inform, inspire, or even disrupt the creative process. To me, personal daily life and art-making are where the magic lives.

The artist’s studio.

Image courtesy of the artist.

color/

Outside of the family help, the line I draw for my studio practice is one in motion. Traveling outside the studio shifts my attention and makes space for experimentation feeding my art making, both physically and mentally. Travel becomes a form of sketching, pushing the boundaries between my exploration of what is factual and what is abstract. This in-between tension is what inspires the image-making.

Whether through food, images, editing, writing, or curating spaces, I’m always drawn to the quiet ways culture and sense show up, in gestures, corners, and the atmosphere. The invigoration of movement and having my camera encourage me to interact with people, spaces, or objects photographing fragments of memory. The revisiting of images back at the studio opens up a diaristic intervention becoming a constant way to learn and grow.

Each photograph opens that pathway to an anecdotal entry to contemplate, research, and better understand a place, feeling, or story that is called to me. Whether still or moving images, my approach remains rooted in this sensibility across all genres. I remain open to whatever is in front of me and allow it to engage with me as I encounter it, inspiring choice decisions to fabricate or execute artworks that honor time, place, and geography through material exploration. Even in curatorial or editorial work, I am drawn to spontaneity and invisible gestures that quietly work themselves to culminate into something of affect.

The artist’s studio.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Interviewed and edited by Sarah Qing Markovitz.

Sarah Qing Markovitz is a writer and curator based in Beijing, China, where she serves as the Director of International Programming at Hive Center for Contemporary Art.

Published April 30, 2025.

Self-portrait, Seoul, 2023
Image courtesy of the artist.

Johnny Le

Johnny Le (b. 1987) is a Vietnamese American fine art photographer and curator based in Los Angeles. He received a BFA in Digital Film and Video from the Art Institute of Portland in 2009.

Le's diaristic approach to capturing moments of in-between sceneries, portraiture, and documentarian artifacts reveal sincere glimpses into the lives of emerging and established artists, icons, interiors, food, and spaces.

Through his experimental curatorial practice and creative advisory, Le extends the rapport he forms with his subjects. He works collaboratively with them to present thematic concepts and cultural programming that bridge the divergent communities of the art world, design, entertainment, fashion, gastronomy, music, and the use of unorthodox exhibition spaces. This collaborative approach imbues his work with a relational meaning that draws viewers into an immersive storytelling experience.

Le is an editor-at-large for Purple Fashion Magazine and contributor for Greatest and Highsnobiety.