Outside of the usual tropes that are associated with certain cities, Saigon in this case, it can be challenging to make photographic work that doesn’t scream cliche.
My ‘usual’ style was put to one side. Trying to be a photographic minimalist in a city like Saigon felt futile. My style just did not fit my experience of the short time spent there.
Some experimentation led me to try just black and white, night only, the scooters, the traffic, slow shutter but they also didn’t seem to fit.
Eventually, I settled on a double-exposure technique* and it seemed to stick for one important reason: the resulting images give you the closest interpretation of how I felt when I walked the city. There’s a beautiful chaos to Saigon I’ll never quite understand but in the short time I spent there this is what it was like for me. I have my own words for this experience, but rather than be prescriptive, it’s how you interpret these images that’s important, and what makes photography interesting.
Some prints from this series are available here. Thanks for looking.
* I put strict rules in place for this: no more than two exposures taken consecutively, minimal editing.
