Field Notes · The Follow List · August 2026
Thumb through the follow list
Ask where Vietnam’s street photography scene lives and nobody points you to a gallery. They hand you their phone. So here are the 10 best Vietnam street photographers to follow on Instagram, told the way Instagram actually feels — a story at a time. Scroll the essay; the phone keeps up. Tap the screen to skip ahead.
This list is different from the usual scraped rankings: we’ve published every photographer on it. All ten have been featured in Streets & Stories, our editorial newsletter — the handle is the daily feed, the linked issue is the deep edit. After the ten, five curated accounts for daily inspiration.
01 · Hanoi · @askmott
Justin Mott
“One hundred assignments for the New York Times.”
The most established name on this list. Mott has spent two decades photographing Vietnam for the world’s biggest publications — more than a hundred assignments for the New York Times among them — and now spends much of his time teaching a new generation how to do the same. His feed mixes assignment work, street frames, and straight-talking craft advice, which makes it one of the rare accounts that’s as useful as it is good-looking.
02 · Hanoi · @xuanphuong.clover
Xuan Phuong Le
“A city of contrasts.”
An independent photographer with a decade behind the lens, working the seam where Hanoi’s past and present collide — a city of contrasts shot by someone who has watched those contrasts sharpen year by year. Her frames catch the fleeting alignments most of us walk straight past.
03 · Hanoi · @daoduyduong
Dao Duy Duong
“What quietly remains.”
A Hanoian born in the 1990s who photographs the old city that still lives beneath the noise — the quiet, poetic Hanoi that survives between the tourist routes and the construction hoardings. If your picture of Hanoi street photography is chaos and traffic, his feed is the correction.
04 · Hanoi · @tungxuanlam_street
Lâm Xuân Tùng
“Original identity — the self before the labels.”
Tùng moves deliberately against the speed of modern image-making. He uses light and shadow to isolate single quiet figures from the noise of the city, recovering what he calls “original identity” — the self that exists before the labels. Scroll his grid and the effect is cumulative: one person at a time, lifted out of eight million.
05 · Hội An · @etiennebossot
Etienne Bossot
“What you don’t shoot.”
Twenty years in Central Vietnam, and a teaching philosophy built on what you don’t shoot. Bossot runs photography tours out of Hội An and has spent two decades warning students off “trophy hunting” — collecting the same conical-hat frames everyone else already has. His feed shows what patience in one region for twenty years actually produces.
06 · Ho Chi Minh City · @saigonsnaps
Alexandre Garel
“The last breath of District 8.”
A French photographer who has spent over a decade documenting the fading architecture and quiet displacements of a city rewriting itself one demolition at a time. Garel’s work on District 8 and Saigon’s disappearing modernist buildings is street photography as record-keeping — some of the places in his archive already no longer exist.
07 · Ho Chi Minh City · @acuriousobserver_
Le Hoang Tuan
“A habit of noticing.”
The handle is the whole philosophy. Tuan is a technology editor who shoots from a persistent habit of noticing rather than artistic ambition — brief alignments, quiet humor, small dissonances that exist only once. His feed is proof that you don’t need to be a full-time photographer to build a serious body of street work.
08 · Ho Chi Minh City · @matdat.ng
MatDat.Ng
“The rhythm of light.”
MatDat.Ng photographs the fleeting pulse of Ho Chi Minh City — the fraction of a second where light, form, and movement converge in a motorbike tunnel or across a wall. Graphic, rhythmic, and precise; if you want to learn to see light before subject, study this grid.
09 · Ho Chi Minh City · @lukenevillephotography
Luke Neville
“A communal affair.”
Neville came to street photography alone and stayed for the company. An educator by profession, he’s spent five years of Sunday photowalks learning where Saigon keeps its contradictions — and his conviction that photography is at its most powerful as a communal affair runs through everything he posts. His full profile lives on his photographer page.
10 · Ho Chi Minh City · @adrienjeanphoto
Adrien Jean
“Beauty in the unscripted.”
In Ho Chi Minh City since 2014, Adrien photographs the beauty that appears in quiet, unscripted moments — everyday life told with the patience of someone who treats the camera as a bridge to the city rather than a barrier against it. His photographer page is already live, and his full Streets & Stories feature arrives later this month.
After the stories
Suggested for you
Five accounts that aren’t individual photographers at all — curated hubs and collectives that surface one strong frame at a time from thousands of photographers worldwide. They’re where you calibrate your own eye, and when your Vietnam work is strong, tag them: curators actively work those hashtags, and Vietnam is under-represented relative to how photogenic these streets are.
street_macadamStreet Macadam FollowA hub for street photographers built around daily curated features via #street_macadam — plus live shows and photographer conversations in multiple languages. A scene, not just a feed.
street.me.upStreet Me Up FollowA tightly edited feature feed — one strong street frame at a time from photographers around the world. Small enough that the curation stays sharp and a feature actually means something.
theindependentphotoThe Independent Photographer FollowAn editorial platform celebrating photography and supporting emerging artists, with regular themed awards judged by working professionals. Wider than street — useful precisely for that.
sublime.streetSublime Street FollowA curated street feed that features community work through #sublimestreet. The editing leans toward light, geometry, and timing over novelty — consistently high signal.
littleboxcollectiveLittle Box Collective FollowAn international collective building on the tradition of unposed photography. Community features via #littleboxcollective, and long-form photographer conversations on their site.
Put your own frames in the mix
A feed full of great work is only useful if it gets you out the door. If Instagram has you itching to shoot, our guides on approaching strangers and the best street photography cities in Asia are good next reads — and when you’ve made something on Vietnam’s streets, we want to see it. Every photographer in the stories above started as a name we didn’t know yet.
Vietnam Streets is a curated community documenting Vietnamese street life. Submit your work — the best make it into our weekly newsletter, reaching 6,900+ photographers.
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Frequently asked questions
How do street photography feature accounts work?
Curated hubs like Street Macadam, Sublime Street, and Little Box Collective republish one photographer's frame at a time, usually found through a submission hashtag such as #street_macadam, #sublimestreet, or #littleboxcollective. Tag your strongest frames and a feature puts your work in front of an audience far larger than your own following.
How do I get my Vietnam street photography featured?
Submit one to five photos at vietnamstreets.org/submit for the community roll on the homepage, or apply at vietnamstreets.org/get-featured for a full Streets & Stories editorial feature — the same spotlight every photographer on this list has received.
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