Luke Neville
Street photography is better in company.
A decade of Saigon mornings
Luke photographs the city where it collides with itself — a wedding in a wet market, graduation caps over City Hall, riggers under Landmark 81. From his feature, A Communal Affair.
Photography is at its most powerful when it becomes a communal affair.
From his feature — Streets & Stories 015
Who you'd be walking with
Luke is a British street and documentary photographer who has made Ho Chi Minh City his home. He was eighteen and on his first trip to Asia when his father handed him a film camera; he pointed it at Saigon, and came back years later to stay. He teaches during the week, shoots commercially through his agency Vietnam Visuals, and has spent the last five years building the Southern Photo Club into the city's standing invitation to shoot together.
In September 2025 he hung Thirty Five, his first solo show, at Ô Creative Space in Bình Thạnh — the title a double exposure of the 35mm frame he shoots and the birthday he was marking. Instead of taking presents, he gave the work to the city.
Read more: Saucefish on “Thirty Five”.
You don't have to shoot alone
Street photography has a reputation as solitary work, and the Southern Photo Club is five years of evidence against it. It is a predominantly offline community in Saigon — people who rise early on Sunday mornings, walk the city together, and find out afterwards how differently each of them saw the same hour. Luke calls them street dwellers, and says the club exists to make street photography accessible.
Photowalks
The heart of it. An early start, a group, and a few hours of the city before it gets going. You go home with your own pictures and a sense of what everyone else found in the same streets.
Workshops
For members who want to push past turning up. Luke teaches for a living, and the club is where that goes when it isn't a classroom.
Galleries
Work that gets made together should get seen together. The club puts photographs on walls — the same scene that produced Thirty Five.
Events
The social half — meets and gatherings that keep a group of photographers a group rather than a follower count.
The club describes its own walks as free community events, which makes newer photographers the point rather than a tolerated extra.
Turn up on Sunday
Walks, workshops and shows are announced on the club's own channels. Introduce yourself and someone will tell you where the next one starts.
The Southern Photo Club is run independently by Luke Neville. Vietnam Streets features him as a community photographer and doesn't organise the walks.