Acclaimed Photographer Pipo Nguyen-duy Found Shot Dead

Pipo Nguyen-duy, a celebrated photographer and well-respected photography professor, was found dead at the age of 64.

Nguyen-duy, a longtime photography professor at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and his 56-year-old wife Trần Thị Nam Phong were found shot to death in their off-campus home.

Nguyen-Duy migrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1975 as a political refugee. He became a highly respected figure at Oberlin College and earned recognition for his photography, becoming one of the few Vietnamese photographers to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Nguyen-duy and his wife were discovered by law enforcement doing a welfare check at a home in Oberlin, Ohio, on Wednesday (October 28). Officers with the Oberlin Police Department were responding to a car fire in a parking lot that morning.

The photography professor’s 31-year-old son Daniel Jones, 31 was arrested by the Oberlin Police Department in connection with the deadly shooting. Jones was charged with multiple counts of murder, felonious assault, and evidence tampering. He is being held in jail on a $3 million bail.

“I am simply overwhelmed with sadness, and I am deeply concerned about the impact of the devastating loss of Pipo to our community,” Carmen Twillie Ambar, the president of Oberlin College, writes in a statement. “Pipo was beloved. During his years at Oberlin, he touched all of us through his passion for photography.”

According to a report by The Art Newspaper, Nguyen-duy graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota with a degree in economics before earning Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. His photography explored immigration, colonialism, Orientalism and identity, drawing on both contemporary and historic photographic techniques. He also explored performance through his work, including a 2001 project in which he played table tennis against a machine for three hours. Nguyen-duy received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011.

Nguyen-Duy joined Oberlin College as a professor of studio art and photography in 1998. The Art Newspaper reports that he was chair of the college’s art department at the time of his death, having postponed his retirement more than once because of his commitment to his students.