Vietnam On Film

VIETNAM ON FILM

We visited Vietnam a month ago, it was the start of August and we were glad to be leaving behind the freezing mornings and short days of Canberra in winter. Our 2 week itinerary - Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hoi An, Saigon / Ho Chi Minh. Phil’s parents are from Vietnam but none of us had been there before- I had been dreaming of visiting from years.

I decided to take 2 film cameras and shoot zero digital. Old me would have taken thousands of digital images in an delusional attempt to create a photodocumentary piece - and then on my return I become too busy and overwhelmed to edit.

New me appreciates shooting less, shooting film, and having no editing. New me has a much healthier relationship with failure, and is ok with potentially coming home with blank rolls, or film that have been damaged by heat or airport scanners. New me f*ed up loading a roll into the Mamiya medium format , exposing the first few frames. Ha.

Highlights- walking around the backstreets of Saigon by myself while the kids were asleep in the hotel, eating noodle dishes from roadside vendors; seeing the magical UNESCO listed Halong Bay on an overnight boat trip, travelling via overnight train to Saigon (the children and I thought it was the best adventure, Phil hated it); tasting some of the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life (super aromatic unsweetened filtered black coffee, salted coffee with condensed milk, coconut coffee, and the old classic Cafe Sua Da.

Liam had a little digital point and shoot, as well as a couple of disposable film cameras - such a fun thing to give to a child on holiday and so unbelievably cute to go through the developed images.

A few hard learned lessons - when shooting in a tropical climate, do not expect to take a camera from an air conditioned hotel room to the outdoors and expect to be able to shoot without the damn thing fogging up (including the internal elements). So many times I had forgotten to ‘acclimatize’ my cameras and couldn’t take any photos for 30-45mins. When you’re in and out of air conditioning all day, that can potentially wipe out most of your photo opportunities. I ended up leaving my camera bag on the balcony of our hotel room overnight or down at reception in the morning.

Unrelated to photography- for Phil, Vietnam was associated with a lot of emotional baggage (and probably some intergenerational trauma) that came with being a child of the Vietnamese diaspora. For a long time, the idea of holidaying in a country that his parents fled during wartime felt very uncomfortable. I think the trip really helped him connect with the country as it is now, uncoupled from the emotional weight of the past.

Shot with: 35mm film Canon EOS 1v, Medium Format Mamiya 6451000s, Kodak Gold, Portra 400, Portra 800. Developed and scanned by Ikigai with Noritsu