Seeing Clearly Is Enough

David Lund photographs Ho Chi Minh City close in, at the distance where street photography stops being reliably distinguishable from portraiture. In a city where strangers meet your eye and smile before the camera is up, that proximity is less a technique than a consequence of turning up often enough.

This is Issue 05, and the second from Saigon. If someone forwarded it to you, welcome — the subscribe form is at the bottom. If you've been here since Issue 01, thank you for staying.

David Lund in Saigon

The busy streets, friendly people and the character of the city make it a street photographer's dream.

— David Lund

That is not a sophisticated account of Saigon and it is not trying to be. Some photographers build a framework around the work and talk you through it; Lund does not, and the pictures are better for the absence. No heavy processing, no concept holding anything up. The subject carries it.

Nothing he shoots is a novel scene in Ho Chi Minh City and he does not pretend otherwise. He photographs as though seeing something clearly were enough, which in a city this visually dense is harder than it sounds. The standing temptation is to add.

His work has run in Figgi Magazine, Snapshot Magazine for Photographers and on 500px, and he shoots commercially for hotel advertising, where the same eye survives a brief. The personal work now splits between street and portraits, which share more than most photographers admit: the light that makes an alley work at six in the morning is the light that makes a face work at six in the morning.

He hosts photowalks for The Southern Photo Club, worth joining if you shoot in the south. More at david-lund.com, and he is at @davidlund_photography.