Issue 015 · Spotlight
Three men stand at a night food stall, their figures softened by a scratched sheet of hanging plastic between them and the camera — Luke Neville

A Communal Affair — Luke Neville in Saigon

Luke Neville came to street photography alone and stayed for the company. Five years of Sunday photowalks have taught him where Saigon keeps its contradictions.

July 2026 · By Jack Ross

On Sunday mornings a group of photographers meets in Saigon and walks. An early start, open to anyone who turns up, and afterwards they compare what each of them found. Luke Neville has been organising walks for over five years now.

He is British, teaches for a living, and came to photography convinced it was something you did alone. The Southern Photo Club is the argument he now makes against that. The photographs below are his own — a decade of them, gathered into the solo show he hung in Bình Thạnh on his thirty-fifth birthday.

Streets & Stories goes out to photographers documenting Vietnamese street life. If someone forwarded this to you, you can subscribe to get each issue in your inbox. Thanks for reading.

Luke Neville in Saigon

Neville was eighteen and on his first trip to Asia when his father handed him a film camera. He pointed it at Saigon. He calls those first frames disjointed, which is the honest word for anyone's first roll — you can see what caught his eye, not yet why. Years later he moved to the city for good and has been photographing it since.

The Southern Photo Club is deliberately offline — photowalks, workshops, small shows, and a start early enough to be out before the city is properly awake. Neville runs it. The regulars turn up week after week; he calls them street dwellers. He teaches during the week, and the club runs on the same instinct — that the work gets better in company. He is out shooting alongside them, not standing over them.

Photography is at its most powerful when it becomes a communal affair — a bridge for connection among strangers who share a common creative drive.

— Luke Neville

In September 2025 he hung the first solo show of that decade's work, Thirty Five, at Ô Creative Space in Bình Thạnh. The title does double duty: the 35mm frame he shoots, and the birthday he was marking. Instead of taking presents he gave the work to the city. What follows here is that show.

It is not only Saigon. The wet markets and the early starts are here, but so are Istanbul, Lhasa, Fes and La Paz — ten years of a teacher's holidays, shot the same way as the Sunday mornings.

Between the club and Vietnam Visuals, the agency he runs for commercial work, he is shooting, teaching and curating across the city most weeks. The Sunday walk is still on.

Links worth your time

From “Thirty Five” — a decade of looking

Three men stand at a night food stall, their figures softened by a scratched sheet of hanging plastic between them and the camera — Luke Neville
Three monks in saffron robes step single file through a dark temple doorway at midday, alms bowls in hand and sandals left at the threshold — Luke Neville
Two women in conical hats sit behind baskets of limes, chilies and herbs at a covered market while a third reaches overhead in the morning light — Luke Neville
Against an orange dawn sky framed by palm fronds, a figure hangs from a pull-up bar on the beachfront as swimmers and a jogger move along the shore — Luke Neville
A bride gathers her white gown and a groom in a pale suit stand among the fish basins and hanging plastic bags of a crowded wet market — Luke Neville
A man on a scooter passes a framing shop, caught inside a gilded mirror leaning at the curb — Luke Neville
Two traffic officers watch from the middle of the road as a golden dragon rears over a crowded street performance — Luke Neville
Graduates in red and black gowns throw their caps into the sky in front of Saigon's City Hall — Luke Neville
Two riggers hoist scaffold poles at dusk, silhouetted against Landmark 81 and the Saigon skyline — Luke Neville
Two women in pastel ao dai pose beside a watermelon stall while a vendor in a floral conical hat looks toward the camera — Luke Neville
A barefoot man in red climbs the ornate ironwork of a colonial palace gate — Luke Neville
A worker in a hard hat passes a yellow-and-red construction gate as a crew rests in the doorway behind — Luke Neville
Seen from above, boys play football on a painted court as a woman in a conical hat rides past on a motorbike — Luke Neville
A vendor in a floral conical hat walks between rows of vegetables laid out on the market ground, seen from directly overhead — Luke Neville
A golden conical hat glows in the gap between the dark canopies of market umbrellas, produce spread below — Luke Neville
Silhouetted fishermen carry crates of the morning catch through the surf toward baskets waiting on the sand — Luke Neville
A costumed opera performer with a long beard waits backstage between red curtains as two others talk in the wings — Luke Neville
A heap of yellow lion dance costumes rests on the temple floor, performers' sneakers poking out beneath the fur — Luke Neville
A kissing couple in wedding dress cast doubled shadows across a sunlit graffiti wall — Luke Neville
A bride's veil streams over a vintage car as attendants stretch it across the street below a stone facade — Luke Neville
In a blue underpass, a man leans over the stair rail to pass something down to a woman in white — Luke Neville
A worker seen through a fan of timber slats, silhouetted against the sky beside a glass tower — Luke Neville
A man throws his arms up mid-shout on Istanbul's Galata Bridge, the water stretching behind him — Luke Neville
A boy holds a yellow balloon beside a marble column in a mosque courtyard as prayer rugs are rolled away behind him — Luke Neville
Children and worshippers move in silhouette beneath the arches of a glowing mosque hall — Luke Neville
A small boy kicks his scooter across an empty mosque courtyard beneath tall arched windows — Luke Neville
Boys in white robes and prayer caps stand shoulder to shoulder, looking out into the haze — Luke Neville
Two boys crouch with plastic water jugs at the bright end of a narrow blue alley — Luke Neville
Rows of wigs on mannequin heads fill a shop's shelves as a customer tries one on in the corner — Luke Neville
The glass wall of Chongqing West railway station mirrored in the polished floor of its empty hall — Luke Neville
A worker climbs scaffolding, the Potala Palace rising on the hill behind him — Luke Neville
Two monks carry a billowing length of red cloth down a stone lane between whitewashed monastery walls — Luke Neville
A row of elders in hats share a bench and conversation along a monastery wall — Luke Neville
Dozens of monks in crimson robes and yellow crests sit gathered beneath bare trees — Luke Neville
A boy looks back through a monastery window, a hall of seated monks reflected in the glass — Luke Neville
A painter rolls fresh blue paint over a weathered blue wall — Luke Neville
One boy balances mid-pose while another sits at the water's edge, a city shoreline across the bay — Luke Neville
A young porter stands over netted sacks of carrots in a covered wholesale market, torch in hand — Luke Neville
Loaders stack sacks of potatoes onto a pickup truck outside a produce market at golden hour — Luke Neville
A balloon seller climbs a ladder up a lamppost, his bundle of balloons floating beside a stone bell tower in La Paz — Luke Neville
A child swings on the frame of a basketball hoop on a walled court, Andean peaks rising beyond — Luke Neville
A woman in a pollera skirt stands over an inflatable slide among the pedal boats and piers of Lake Titicaca — Luke Neville
A brass band in matching blue suits and red ties waits with trombones between sets — Luke Neville
The stone dye pits of the Fes tannery spread below ochre houses, workers moving between the basins — Luke Neville
The contact sheet

Every issue of Streets & Stories

  1. 01One Hundred Assignments for the New York Times — Justin Mott in Hanoi
  2. 02The Last Breath of District 8 — Alexandre Garel in Saigon
  3. 03Twenty Years in Hoi An — Etienne Bossot
  4. 04A City of Contrasts — Xuan Phuong Le in Hanoi
  5. 05Seeing Clearly Is Enough — David Lund in Saigon
  6. 06White Flower Petals — Tyler Henthorn in Saigon
  7. 07What Quietly Remains — Dao Duy Duong in Hanoi
  8. 08Original Identity — Lâm Xuân Tùng in Hanoi
  9. 09A Habit of Noticing — Le Hoang Tuan in Saigon
  10. 10The Rhythm of Light
  11. 11Before the Day Begins — Pete Walls in Hội An
  12. 12Crossings — Paul Evan Green in Saigon
  13. 13On His Own Terms — Jimmy Ky in Vietnam
  14. 14Slow Rooms — Antonio di Vico in Hanoi
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