On His Own Terms

Jimmy Ky has been photographing since he was eight, in Sydney, a long way from where his family came from. For most of his life Vietnam reached him second-hand — his parents' memories, and the compressed version of a country you get on a short family trip. He kept going back. Eventually he went back on his own terms.

That is why this issue does not sit in one city. The frames run from the coast to the Mekong to a temple courtyard, which is the itinerary of someone covering ground rather than working a patch.

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Jimmy Ky in Vietnam

One picture here is worth knowing the method for, because it is not a photograph of a thing. It was made from above a basket boat with a slow shutter and a rotation, so the water goes to radial blur while the person at the centre stays sharp. That is an interpretation rather than a record, and it is a decision somebody makes only after concluding that the literal version of a scene is not the one they want.

What started drawing me more to Vietnam was to learn more and reconnect with my culture — to see it for myself, instead of only through my parents' eyes.

— Jimmy Ky

The rest of the Vietnam work goes the other way: quiet, and mostly of people absorbed in something that has nothing to do with him. Nothing in it is performed for a camera, which usually means the photographer waited instead of asking.

The diaspora position tends to get described as a handicap — not fully inside, not fully outside. Here it cuts the other way. He cares enough about these places to want something true out of them, and he is far enough from the received version of Vietnam to have no picture already in his head to go and confirm. That is a harder thing to arrange than it sounds, and it is most of what separates this work from a travel edit.

His portfolio at jimmyky.com covers Vietnam, Japan, Korea and China, built over several years of travelling Asia alone, and the range is the thing to look at: where the Vietnam frames are still, the Japan and Korea work goes into colour and crowd. He sells framed prints through the site. On Instagram he is @kyjimmy.