An early Sunday morning photo walk through Saigon’s District 5 with The Southern Photo Club brought to life a lively walking route that otherwise would get the airpods-in-attention-elsewhere treatment of any other time outside.
The affair was relatively straightforward. We gathered at 7 o’clock sharp at an unassuming The Coffee House location on Trần Hưng Đạo Street. Names, IG handles and smiles were exchanged, cà phê sữa đás hastily consumed, and we were off on a 1.5-kilometer trek to a scenic temple and a bustling local market.
It was everything from street vendors, motorbikes, coffee drinkers, a slice of sidewalk action, and unavoidably, the occasional garbage pile. Yet as an adaptive mechanism, your brain may not be noting all but only a few of the most important things in your surroundings.
To see things photographically, as they are, you need to slow down and pay attention. It’s the attention one gives that makes things special.
Ambulant bike… where do you go? Can a random coffee drinker be this beautiful? It seems that way, as a group of crouching photographers from the Southern Photo Club politely sought permission to photograph a middle-aged Vietnamese man on a broken Trần Hưng Đạo street sidewalk while he was sipping his Sunday morning robusta.
Seeing the group collecting before him like incoming doves, he paused briefly before demurely, smilingly striking a pose for the photographers. Kindred thanks are given, and the club moves on.
Ho Chi Minh City through a non-stereotypical camera lens
“Vietnam photography isn’t just about ladies wearing nón lá!” photowalk organizer Luke Neville said.
“Personally, it is a way for us to engage in the ‘real Saigon’ and see Vietnam through a different lens. Living as a foreigner here for almost ten years, it could be very easy to stay in the comfortable ‘bubble’ but these walks give us a chance to explore the bustling local markets, hidden temples, and web of alleyways that makes Saigon unique,” he added.
The club has been shooting since before COVID — Neville founded the group with others who’ve moved on to new locales, but he eschews a leadership title.
“We want anyone to be able to lead these walks,” Neville told Saucefish.
He then explained that they’re an offshoot of another local group that wanted to start charging a fee to join their walks. Accessibility and a clear message that “anyone and any skill level is welcome” gave birth to the Southern Photo Club.
Typically, the group meets in a central location and plans a walk to some busy, highly populated area like a market or some noteworthy place like Nguyễn Huệ Walking Street. Too touristy, you think? Neville rejoindered that anywhere and everywhere can be a visually interesting moment, adding that architecture and the shadows alone make Saigon’s walking street worthy of a photographer’s visit.
For other photographers, it’s the preferred way of getting to know the city.
A street photography enthusiast club that sees members from all over
Ahmad Malulein, a member of this Sunday’s shooting flock, is a former Dubai resident and award-winning photographer who has acquired an intimate knowledge of District 9’s Thai-style temples, for example, through his work as a photographer.
But his favorite subject to shoot in Saigon? People.
“They just smile. They smile and I take the photo,” he said while making his way up the steps in District 5’s Ten Thousand Buddha Temple, the club’s first stop of the morning.
“These are the most friendly people. I’ve never had a problem,” Malulein added.
He contrasted the Saigonese attitude with the Italians he recently photographed.
“In Italy, lots of photos of blurred hands, people saying ‘No’,” which he noted is preferable to his experience in Morocco where individuals may get physical if you’re shooting over their objections.
Photographers were generally received warmly the morning of Southern Photo Club’s Sunday District 5 walk with some subjects even smiling, posing or actively trying to help the photographers get better photos.
When one of the group’s photographers, Ibrahim Sabbah, crouched beside a crab seller, she began splashing water on the creatures to stimulate them.
“Đây, đây, đây!” she said, or in English “Here, here, here!”
Street photography a healthy big city hobby
“It’s about the details,” Sabbah said: a face, a hand, a flower bouquet. “If it’s not there, you try to make it.”
Sabbah moved to Saigon from Gaza four-and-a-half years ago. Safety is the biggest difference between the two countries, he said, a luxury that’s allowed him space to grow as a person.
“When it’s not safe, you only think about the essentials,” like where to get food and how to avoid harm.
“When it’s safe, you start thinking about things like fun and what you want in life,” he said.
He said photography emerged as a hobby for someone like him who wants friends but also has no particular athletic ability and also no interest in the serious drinking it might take to be comfortable at a club or bar.
Joining a photo club with the mission of making friends and improving himself has proven successful as a friend-making vehicle. “It worked,” he said.
Between Palestine and Saigon, a few things are similar, like the markets. Open, wet markets exist in Gaza, “but there’s less food,” Sabbah reported.
Walking through an already busy Sunday morning at Chợ Hoà Bình, Sabbah walked around people and bikes observing another difference: Gaza’s markets don’t have nearly as many motorcycles as those are often connected to Hamas, this being the group’s mode of transportation of choice.
Whereas his country serves a yellowed rice tinted with coriander, he noted the difference of Vietnam’s white rice seeing it piled on a bamboo sieve looking for his next shot.
A woman selling jackfruit, seeing his camera, says “no” and waves her hand offering one of the few rejections of the day. So Sabbah moves on to a durian seller who, seeing the incoming photographer, calls the fruit’s name in Vietnamese. He accepts the invitation to shoot.
Even local photo enthusiasts discover something new about Vietnam
“You get to follow others and you learn new things,” Mai Trần, a local attendee to the photo walk, said.
She’s explored the city with the group for two years and expressed her appreciation of the sharing of skills and warmth of those she’s walked with. For her, it’s cool to have something of her own that she can present to the world.
“This is my own hobby… but I’m also sharing something in a special way,” she added.
Mai, another photographer, and Sabbah walked the streets surrounding the market, somewhat quieter but still replete with human activity and just all the stuff you never notice unless you stop to actually look, like a fleet of red lanterns that all gazed on in casual reverie.
They looked for a long time with the controlled fascination of artists seeming to see something that escapes the other normals who walked by and around the photographers. Their long, considered glances were punctuated intermittently by the raise of lenses and the “click” of capture.
Join The Southern Photo Club in Ho Chi Minh City on (most) Sundays to explore Saigon, photographically
With the tropical sun becoming less merciful and “too close to nine o’clock for good light” as Malulein commented, the entire group began retreating into the depths of District 5 where we settled for a comfortable Phúc Long to exchange technical tips and pleasantries.
One might be wondering, or perhaps swiping to the very end of this lengthy, disjointed storytelling piece to find out how exactly one can join this seemingly enigmatic Saigon street photography club.
Simple. Check (and join) the The Southern Photo Club’s public Facebook Group for photowalk updates. Just turn up, say hi, and be greeted by a legion of photographers with the same hobby as yourself.
Besides, Saucefish’s very own photographer declared that he managed to “capture more street photo keepers in an hour than the last seven years living in Ho Chi Minh City”, so why shouldn’t you?
