Public Interiors

Vietnam — January/February 2026

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PUBLIC INTERIORS documents life on the thresholds of Vietnamese streets, everyday third places quietly disappearing.

 

Over three weeks in 2026, I walked through cities across Vietnam after dark, a Ricoh GR in my pocket, documenting residential neighborhoods under pressure. Moving away from tourist centers, I was drawn to old quarters where street commerce and domestic life have coexisted for decades. My subjects emerged from observation, never staged: a seller fixing her hair, men sharing a meal on plastic stools, a mother arranging flowers, someone washing dishes on the pavement.

 

At the heart of this series is hè phố, Vietnam’s sidewalk culture. The pavement becomes a living room, a workshop, a kitchen, a marketplace. Neighbors gather on ghế nhựa (plastic stools) to eat, trade, converse. The prevalence of bộ đồ bộ, loungewear worn openly on the street, embodies this ease: no change of clothes to mark the transition from private to street, just people at home in the city.

 

Underlying this fusion is the nhà ống (tube house), shaped by colonial-era taxation on street-frontage width. The boundary between commerce and residence became a permeable threshold. Today, these spaces are under siege. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, speculation drives a shift toward vertical density. Municipal campaigns to “modernize” sidewalks remove informal stalls and vendors, threatening livelihoods and a unique public culture.

 

The title names the paradox: interior scenes, domestic and private, rendered public under night glow. Even alone, no one here is isolated. Shot by available light, hand-held, without staging. Frontal composition flattens the frame but reveals depth. Each façade becomes a luminous screen where layers unfold. No performance, no audience, just daily life as it exists.

These are what Ray Oldenburg called “third places”, neither home nor work, where family life and street commerce intertwine. In cities increasingly ordered by platforms, the sidewalk remains unscheduled: no booking, no rating, no feed decides who may linger there; proximity does. Now caught between tradition and development, Public Interiors is not a prophecy, but evidence of a present on the verge of erasure.

 

In 2026, this series was a finalist for the Mark Power Special Prize at the URBAN Photo Awards, and received Photographer of the Week (June 2026) and a citation among 10 rising talents (July 2026) by All About Photo.