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Photographing in Vietnam was a profound and compelling experience. Two main aspects emerged for me as the days passed by: the intense life at dusk, and the Vietnamese proximity with the goods.
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Photographing people, and doing it mainly at the end of the day, when the streets and the riversides are all full with life, is an overwhelming experience. When the end of the day arrives, people get back home. By bus, or motorbike, or bicycle, they cross the city, the river. They return to their loved ones. They get back to their inner self’s. The end of the day brings colour and animation to the streets, to the riverside. Friends and neighbours talk, children let their imagination run across the night.
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Words didn’t come out when I entered the Taoist temple in the Saigon Chinese quarter. Only one tremendous need for silence. The need to absorb this strong sense of calmness and respect for the dead and the elderly. You can feel it in the air. It enters on your lungs as you breathe, it sooths your heartbeat. And you just observe. You try to interpret all these feelings that emanate through you. There is a deep sense of humbleness when you let yourself be an apprentice of a different culture. And in Vietnam you find different religions, but all sharing common aspects. Small and not so small aspects, such as the incense, the devotion, the beliefs, the sacred, the respect for the elderly, the social equity of the dead. One feels a powerful yet calm force surrounding these places of contemplation. You can fell their proximity to their goods.
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