The working day around Hội An is mostly over by mid-morning. Ducks go out before the heat. Basket boats go through the surf at first light. Rice comes in while the fields are still gold. By the time most visitors are up, the places that held all of that have gone quiet until the same hour tomorrow.
A man walks with his catchA riverside shrine
Pete Walls has built a body of work inside those hours. He is British, and he spent years moving between regions of Vietnam before settling in Hội An. What he photographs is work, and the places work happens: markets, fishing beaches, paddies, doorways. Five of those frames are in this issue.
Boats moored safely amongst the river_s coconut grovesClouds reflected in the riverControlled burning occurs following the harvest
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Pete Walls in Hội An
He describes his method as leaving the house without much of a plan. That sounds like nothing until you set it against the alternative, which is turning up somewhere with a shot list and spending the morning trying to make the place produce it. Years of moving around the country taught him to take each region at its own pace instead, and central Vietnam's pace is early.
The best photographs come from real moments rather than forcing anything. You come home with new connections, good images, and stories worth sitting down with that night.
— Pete Walls
Read the order he puts those in. Connections first, pictures second, and then a story worth sitting with that night. That is a description of a day out rather than a shoot, and it is the difference you can see in the work: the people in it are responding to somebody they have met, not to a lens that turned up.
Flooded rice paddies divided by low earthen dikes reflect a pink and lavender dusk sky, with a lone farmer working mid-field and blue mountains layered on the horizonSeen over a man's outstretched arm gripping a pole, a pale mannequin floats on brown floodwater beside a submerged metal gate, banana trees, and houses standing in the flood
It also explains why the still frames hold their own against the loud ones. A morning that opens in the surf ends with somebody watching the street from a chair, and he gives the second one the same weight as the first. The day does not stop being the subject once the activity drains out of it.
A man in a dark helmet and grey shirt wades waist-deep in muddy floodwater along a shophouse street, clutching his rolled-up shirt beneath sagging orange tarpaulinsA smiling barefoot man in a blue and black jacket sits on the bow of a wooden boat being poled through a flooded street of yellow colonial shophousesA person in a conical hat and clear plastic rain poncho stands upright in a wooden boat, rowing with a long oar down a flooded lantern-hung street in Hội An's old town
His work has run on Saigoneer. Alongside commercial jobs he takes very small groups out around Hội An, which is one way to reach the parts of central Vietnam that do not announce themselves. He posts what he makes at @pjwphoto.
An elderly white-haired woman in a dark velvet jacket and patterned trousers sits on a blue plastic chair on a doorstep, gazing to the side in front of a brown metal doorIn early morning light, two women walk past a street vendor in a blue bucket hat arranging produce on the pavement, with silk lanterns hanging overhead and a motorbike rider behind them
Two women talk across a makeshift counter inside a weathered market hall strung with red flags, surrounded by stacked crates, plastic stools, red chairs, and parked bicyclesA woman in a knit hat and plaid shirt ladles broth from a large steel pot at a street food stall, beside a glass cabinet stacked with bowls under tarpaulin shadeA smiling woman in a conical hat and blue jacket stands with her loaded bicycle — feed sack, furled red umbrella, and baskets — on a street of yellow walls and pink bougainvillea
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At a riverside fish market, women in hats sort fish around a foam crate piled with crushed ice, with red and orange plastic basins and the river visible beyond the stallsA woman in a conical hat and green patterned shirt strides past fish vendors working among yellow crates and styrofoam boxes beneath a concrete bridge pillar bearing a red Viettel 5G billboard
An elderly woman sits on a stool holding a conical hat outside a small blue-shuttered shop with a rusted tin roof, while a shirtless man stands inside by a snack-stocked cabinetTwo men load bundled fishing nets onto a blue wooden boat at a rocky shoreline, one in a turquoise shirt hauling green netting beside a floating round coracle basketA woman in a purple jacket and conical hat carries two huge sheaves of rice straw balanced on a shoulder pole across a cut rice field
A man in a beige shirt and blue bucket hat carries a large bundle of golden rice straw over his shoulder through harvested paddy stubbleA laughing woman in a conical hat and maroon jacket herds a flock of white ducks across wet grass at the edge of a rice field under a cloudy sky
A man in a grey polo reclines in an old barber chair with one leg propped up, looking at his phone inside a green-walled barbershop with bamboo and tools on the wallA red and white combine harvester cuts through a golden rice paddy while a man in a conical hat walks in the foreground and two workers gather stalks behindA woman in a plaid jacket and conical hat stands in a ripe rice field pointing into the distance, holding a sickle and an armful of cut rice stalks
A woman in a plaid jacket and conical hat stands in a golden rice field holding a sheaf of green rice stalks under one arm and a sickle at her sideA close portrait of a smiling man in a brimmed canvas hat paddling with a long wooden oar against a pale sky, wearing a light blue t-shirt
A woman in a conical hat with a shoulder bag stands in market shade as two vendors in purple bend over their stall, with bicycles and shoppers blurred along the lane behindA white house-number plaque reading 47/24 Trần Hưng Đạo mounted on a yellow wall dappled with leaf shadows in warm lightAn elderly white-haired woman sits at a market stall behind a basket of eggs wrapped in plastic, flanked by red mesh sacks of shallots, a red plastic basket, and bundles of green beans
Ice arrives to be broken down into smaller chunksSquid neatly arranged in bamboo
fishermen pulling coracle boat through breaking waves at sunrisefisherwoman carrying catch at sunrise vietnamfisherwoman carrying fresh squid at sunrise
portrait of vietnamese fish market workervietnam market elderly vendor portrait
