The Last Breath of District 8 — Alexandre Garel in Saigon

Alexandre Garel

Photographer spotlight

Alexandre Garel in Saigon

Alexandre Garel came to Vietnam more than a decade ago and did what most photographers say they will do but rarely manage: he stayed. Based in Saigon ever since, he has built a body of work driven not by the city's spectacle but by its memory — the fading shophouses, the colonial-era structures losing ground to new towers, the informal communities that grew up in the spaces the city left behind. His lens is pointed at what is leaving, not what is arriving.

His most recent project centres on District 8, a network of canal-side neighbourhoods in southern Ho Chi Minh City where informal housing — much of it assembled from corrugated metal, timber, and whatever else the river did not claim — has stood for decades. The residents are now being relocated and the structures demolished, part of the city's ongoing effort to redevelop its waterfront. Garel's photographs, taken in 2025, document the final months: an elderly resident walking the canal bank among the debris, a motorcyclist crossing a metal bridge above the dismantled scaffolding of a home, neighbours gathered at a street-side food cart under the deep blue of dusk. These are not crisis photographs. They are quiet, careful records of a place in its last season.

Through long-term projects developed across southern Vietnam, Garel pursues what he calls a "sensitive exploration of territories in transition." His ongoing series Houses of Soul — Mekong focuses on colonial-era houses in the Mekong Delta region — structures that once anchored entire communities and now stand empty or altered beyond recognition. The project, which will be published as a book in late 2026, reflects on architecture not as design but as biography: the lives that passed through a building, the routines embedded in its walls, and what is lost when the building comes down.

His work has been featured in ELLE Vietnam, Vietnam News, Dot Magazine, Tuổi Trẻ Magazine, and Viet TV. All of his projects are self-funded — there is no grant behind the work, no commission, no editorial assignment. He photographs because the subject demands it, and because no one else is standing in District 8 at dusk with a camera while the houses come down. Follow him at @saigonsnaps.

What we're watching

Links worth your time

• @saigonsnaps — Alexandre's Instagram — His ongoing visual diary of Saigon's disappearing architecture, canal-side settlements, and the quiet textures of a city in transition.
• Ho Chi Minh City — Vietnam Streets city guide — Our editorial guide to shooting in Saigon: District 1 to District 8, the markets, the alleys, and the light that cuts through the humidity.
• Get featured in Streets & Stories — Apply to be our next photographer spotlight. We review every submission.

Gallery

District 8 — The Full Series

Thirty-six photographs from Alexandre Garel's ongoing documentation of District 8's waterfront settlements, their demolition, and the lives that continue within them. Shot on CineStill 400D film and Fujifilm GFX medium format digital.