2018 I travelled to Việt Nam. It was my first venture into the ‘big wide world’ so to speak, post moving to australia a couple of years prior.

These photos were taken with my first manual film camera not long after I found it. I didn’t have much of an idea of how to use it and at this point in my life hadn’t considered my role as a visitor and what power and responsibility one holds in this position. This feels important to note, as it meant my photo taking was really spontaneous, and I feel this is one of the main factors that enabled me to capture so many incredibly beautiful moments. I was being that young, naive drunk nuisance, and simultaneously was in complete awe of this place.

I travelled from Sài Gòn (in the south) to the very northern border over a span of 6 weeks. While in the north I did a 3 day motorcycle loop which is def a bit crazy as a don’t have a licence but holy heck, this was undeniably one of the most memorable chapters. During the loop I took one of my favourite photos, the little boy in red with his little red tractor. I was by myself when I saw him. There were so many tender and private moments that I was able to be a silent observer of. I’m not sure if I deserved the power of being able to take something from them in the way that photo taking does, and I don’t feel heaps comfortable with taking photos of lil wee humans in particular these days, but it happened- and without a doubt my time here had a real impact on me which continues to get sparked whenever I spend time with these visual memories.

I thought I was going to fly back to Sài Gòn and straight to melbourne but cooked my itinerary and ended up having a whole 24 unplanned hours where I had originally landed. Being able to experience Sài Gòn through the sensory lense of this 6 week journey, relative to my initial newbie experience, was spectacular. Việt Nam has an established film photog culture and I ended up zooming to a developing studio within a few hours of needing to return to the airport, they developed the 9 rolls within a couple of hours which is truly wild. In this developing window I explored a quiet outer edge of the city and visited Bảo tàng chứng tích chiến tranh, the war memorial museum. I really didn't know anything about the war pre entering this building, ultra minimal at best. They have multiple floors that share information and relics from this time. There is one dedicated to photographs of people assaulted by the chemical weapons America deployed during their siege, photos of people born disabled, bodies, lineages impaired from this intentional mass poisoning of the land. This broke my heart open ngl. Wtf. It’s hard not to feel like the world is actually cursed sometimes. To hold this new developing context in conjunction with all of these below moments…. mmm. Yeah. Hard to put into words.

These photos are certainly not mine but I am the holder of them, I hope they can stir something in you as they do for me.