Original Identity

Lâm Xuân Tùng photographs Hanoi by subtracting most of it. The frames run mostly to black — dense negative space with a figure somewhere inside it, isolated, often in silhouette, caught at the edge of being visible at all.

Street photography is an attempt to momentarily disconnect from the flow of algorithms and social labels, in order to rediscover layers of original identity drifting within the hurried rhythm of urban life.

— Lâm Xuân Tùng

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Lâm Xuân Tùng in Hanoi

Nearly every camera pointed at Hanoi is after the same thing: the motorbikes, the density, the sheer volume of the place. He is after what is left once you take all of that out. He describes the city as a portal rather than a subject — a way into what he calls the parallel world of the mind.

Which sounds abstract until you consider what it costs to do. Emptying a frame in a city this crowded means waiting for one person to cross the one patch of light in a dark street, and then declining to photograph anything else that happens.

The rest of the work runs on the same idea. His solo show Nhân dạng gốc — "Original Identity" — sets who a person is underneath against the identity they assemble for public use. His art book Nội came out in 2023. Phố tan tầm, a collaborative book bringing together four photographers on Hanoi's streets at the end of the working day, was scheduled for July 2026.

He has been recognised in the 35Awards 9th edition catalogue and the 1x Awarded Photographer programme, shown by Noirfoto Gallery, and has worked with Sony, Canon, Sigma and Ricoh. He is at @tungxuanlam_street.