Twenty Years in Hoi An

Hoi An flatters every camera. The lanterns, the yellow walls, the river at dusk — and most photographers leave with the same five pictures. Etienne Bossot has lived there twenty years, long enough to watch the town go from backpacker detour to one of the most photographed small cities on earth, and to watch most of those photographs turn into the same photograph.

His work is a twenty-year argument against that photograph.

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Etienne Bossot in Hoi An

He calls the approach "intentional authenticity", which sounds like a workshop slogan until you look at what it rules out: the staged tableau, the cued smile, the grab shot of a stranger's face. What it leaves is harder to come by — fish markets at four in the morning, the paddies behind the tourist strip, the back lanes where Hoi An turns into the rest of Vietnam.

The story of the subject should always come before the accolades of the photographer.

— Etienne Bossot

He is a vocal critic of what he calls trophy hunting: collecting dramatic portraits of strangers without context, consent or care. Through Pics of Asia and Hoi An Photo Tour & Workshop he has spent more than a decade teaching that position rather than teaching aperture, and people tend to come away thinking about the frames they chose not to take.

The commercial side runs through his production company, Danang Photographer — lifestyle, hotels and resorts across Central Vietnam. Different register, same grammar: real people in real light, nothing posed that does not need to be. He is f-stop gear's ambassador in Asia, a sensible fit for someone who has spent two decades in and out of fields, markets and monsoons.

His tutorials and essays for Pics of Asia have been picked up by PetaPixel and Fstoppers, and the site has become a quiet reference point for photographers trying to work in Southeast Asia without falling into its clichés. He is at @etiennebossot.