Bridge between past and present
From 2022 to present, Mr. Phung Quang Trung (born in 1996, Hai Duong City, Hai Duong Province) and members of the Skyline group have restored thousands of martyrs' photos for free across the country to pay tribute to heroes and martyrs.
Initially, Trung and the Skyline group simply had a hobby of editing photos and wanted to contribute something to society. Later, a nephew whose uncle was a martyr approached the group to ask for help restoring his uncle's photo.
After the photo was delivered to the family, the nephew cried a lot because the photo was so real. Those tears touched the emotions of Trung and the Skyline group and motivated him and his brothers in the group to take more meaningful photos like that in the future.
The members of the Skyline group include many different professions such as shippers, students, transportation company employees... Realizing that photo restoration is a meaningful job, Mr. Trung and some of his brothers decided to stop their main jobs to focus and devote themselves to photo restoration.
Each photo of a martyr sent to his family is meticulously restored by the Skyline group, with every line and color meticulously drawn. Many families have come to the Skyline group to restore the photos of martyrs.
"We were born in peacetime, not knowing what war was. Fortunately, we get to do what we love and bring value to the community. At first, we just thought this was a useful job, but later, when many relatives of martyrs came to us to restore photos, we realized that this is a responsibility.
Each photo is not only a reconstructed photo but also a bridge between the past and the present, recalling the heroic time of our ancestors who fought and sacrificed to protect the Fatherland.
Mr. Trung said that each photo has a different level of difficulty, some are old and damaged, some are portraits, some are not complete. Therefore, the group had to contact the family many times to sketch and describe in detail the martyr's face.
"There are photos that take us a few weeks, a few months or even a whole year to complete. As long as the martyr's relatives still have information or any details related to the martyr, we will continue to do it and never give up," said Mr. Trung.
Like a son, a grandson
During the process of photo restoration, Trung and his team had many emotions. There were happy stories, sad stories, and thrilling stories.
Sharing with Lao Dong, Mr. Trung said: "There are photos that we have finished and brought to give to the Vietnamese Heroic Mother, but as soon as we arrived, we heard that she had passed away, she did not have time to see her son's image. When I presented the photo to the altar, I cried a lot because I could not overcome time to help her see her son."
After each photo was restored and given away, Mr. Trung felt like a child or grandchild in the family who brought a photo of a loved one back.
To date, the Skyline group has traveled to many places. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu Victory (May 7, 1954), the group restored photos and presented 32 portraits of People's Armed Forces Heroes to the Dien Bien Provincial Museum.
From December 2023 to May 2024, Hai Duong Provincial Youth Union and Skyline group carried out 2 major projects to restore photos of martyrs in the province...
Recently, in response to the pain and loss of the people of Lang Nu village (Lao Cai province), Mr. Phung Quang Trung also established a photo restoration project to give to the families of the victims, helping them preserve the last images of their loved ones.
