Crossings — Paul Evan Green in Saigon
A train roars past a stop sign, a vendor steps onto the zebra stripes, a child runs barefoot across a midnight plaza. Paul Evan Green finds Saigon where it crosses.
This issue is about crossings — the railway gate, the painted stripes, the open square. They are the places a city slows down just long enough to be seen, where one current of life cuts across another and, for a moment, everything is in negotiation.
Our guide is Paul Evan Green, an Australian photographer who received a Leicaflex SL as a teenager, studied photography at art school, and spent seven of his last thirteen years abroad living and working in Ho Chi Minh City — including a stint leading photo tours in Saigon and the Mekong Delta for Vietnam in Focus. He has just returned to his hometown of Sydney; the pictures here are what he carried back.
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Paul Evan Green in Saigon
Green's path to these streets is long and unhurried. A family friend gave him a Leicaflex SL in his teens; he wore it out on the streets of Sydney, went to art school, and moved up through medium and large format — a Plaubel Peko Supra, a Mamiya C220. His influences read like a syllabus of patient looking: Atget, Sander, Sudek, Kertesz, Walker Evans, Koudelka, Arbus, Davidson. Freelance since 1989, he has kept street work as the thing he does with his free time, which may be why none of these pictures feel rushed.
The railway crossing photograph holds the issue's tension in a single frame. Two women in conical hats wait at the barrier, one standing behind the other's wheelchair, her hand resting on her companion's shoulder. In front of them a red stop sign; behind it, the blue-and-red blur of a passing train. Everything that moves and everything that waits, separated by a low red gate in evening light.
Vietnam is a vibrant, energetic and friendly environment for street photography. Backgrounds are colorful and historically significant.
— Paul Evan Green
Then the city resumes. A vendor crosses a zebra crossing under a shoulder pole strung with plastic bags of rice crackers, her face wrapped against the sun beneath a green conical hat, purple sandals against the white stripes. It is a working picture of a working person — the kind of frame Sander or Evans would have recognized — but the swaying load gives it the rhythm of a dance.
The third photograph leaves the traffic behind. At night, a barefoot child in a green shirt sprints across a plaza inlaid with dark swirling scrollwork, his shadow thrown long across the pattern. The ornament in the paving could be a drawing of the run itself — loops and curls, energy set in stone. It is the quietest of the three frames and the most joyful.
Green is now back in Sydney, flying drones, building a new series, and rebuilding his freelance base. His work has appeared in books and magazines on art, food, and architecture. You can follow what comes next at @paul_e_green on Instagram.
Links worth your time
- paulgreenphotovideoart.com — Paul Evan Green’s website — His full portfolio of photo, video and art — four decades of work, from Sydney commercial assignments to the streets of Saigon.
- @paul_e_green — Paul Evan Green’s Instagram — Decades of street work from Sydney to Saigon, plus the drone series he's building now — follow @paul_e_green.
- Get featured in Streets & Stories — Photographing Vietnam's streets? Apply to be featured in a future issue of Streets & Stories.
