Throughout my travels in Vietnam in 2023 and 2024 there was one constant: motorbikes. They were always and everywhere and at once. I learned that to cross a street…any street…was to tempt fate. Midtown Manhattan was child’s play in comparison. They seemed to fill every nook and cranny of the city landscape. In an economy where cars are unaffordable to many and where walking involves maneuvering around a whirling street life, motorbikes allow typical Vietnamese to live, work, and play on a larger landscape. Or as one Vietnamese driver put it, “my motorbike is my freedom.”
These photos were taken on either the street or as a passenger in a Grab car. (Grab is like Uber in Vietnam). None were posed and most drivers seemed unaware that I was taking their photograph. No surprise here, as drivers need all their powers of concentration to jockey for position on the teeming, tight roads. I began from a fascination with all the differently shaped and sized objects drivers had strapped, taped, or bungeed to their motorbikes: balloons, boxes, food, bottles of water, bags of recycled plastic. Many seemed to defy the limits of the imagination and the laws of gravity. And the children! Children perched here and there, in front and behind, in multiples, sometimes with a dog tucked between the driver’s feet. From there, I became intent on capturing the varying colors and movement of the motorbikes as they sped past me—a photographer’s game of speed and skill played out in high stakes traffic.
These photographs also give you an idea of the world surrounding the motorbikes and their drivers; the tumult of the city is apparent in each image. There’s the rider racing the clock to deliver pomelos, an entire family off to a festive meal, and the flower vendor with a cacophony of colors surrounding her. The photos, then, depict a country on the move, a people that seem less interested in the past and more intent on a rush to get to the future. It is also one I never tired of looking at.
These photos were taken on either the street or as a passenger in a Grab car. (Grab is like Uber in Vietnam). None were posed and most drivers seemed unaware that I was taking their photograph. No surprise here, as drivers need all their powers of concentration to jockey for position on the teeming, tight roads. I began from a fascination with all the differently shaped and sized objects drivers had strapped, taped, or bungeed to their motorbikes: balloons, boxes, food, bottles of water, bags of recycled plastic. Many seemed to defy the limits of the imagination and the laws of gravity. And the children! Children perched here and there, in front and behind, in multiples, sometimes with a dog tucked between the driver’s feet. From there, I became intent on capturing the varying colors and movement of the motorbikes as they sped past me—a photographer’s game of speed and skill played out in high stakes traffic.
These photographs also give you an idea of the world surrounding the motorbikes and their drivers; the tumult of the city is apparent in each image. There’s the rider racing the clock to deliver pomelos, an entire family off to a festive meal, and the flower vendor with a cacophony of colors surrounding her. The photos, then, depict a country on the move, a people that seem less interested in the past and more intent on a rush to get to the future. It is also one I never tired of looking at.
