The Rhythm of Light

Nguyen Van Hai was born in 1982 in Quang Nam, where the Thu Bồn runs out through the rice fields, and moved south to Ho Chi Minh City. He photographs under the name MatDat.Ng.

The competition record is a long one for a man whose subject is a pavement. In 2024 he was named one of the Top 35 Street Photographers at the 10th 35AWARDS. In 2025 he placed in the top 1% of the Conceptual Minimalism contest and the top 5% in Art Photography, and reached the Top 50 of Sony's Vietnam Snap competition at Be Alpha Day in Ho Chi Minh City. He won an entry at the 2025 GR Photo Festival, and his prints hung at GR Space in Tokyo through March and April 2026.

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MatDat.Ng in Saigon

It's a way to turn the ordinary into emotion, and transform random moments into timeless slices of life.

— MatDat.Ng

What he waits for is not the person. Most street photographers watch for a face and take whatever light they are given; he works the other way round, finds the light first and waits to see who walks into it. It is why the frames look composed without looking staged. The composition was already there. The subject finished it.

The four photobooks tell you more than the prize list does. Father, The Person Who Brings Tet Home, Touch and Street in My Pocket are domestic titles, and two of them name a person rather than a place. Whatever the contests are rewarding here, the thing he keeps going back to is people he has some feeling about.

He has worked with Xiaomi on the T15 Pro and contributed to the Ngan project. The daily walking is still where everything else comes from. He is at @Matdat.Ng.