Hanoi

Hanoi is a city that reveals itself in layers, from the workshop courtyards of its surrounding villages to the iron spans of its oldest bridges. This project moves between two distinct worlds: the artisan communities of Quang Phu Cau and Chuong, where incense sticks dry in open yards under chromatic arrangements that speak to both ritual and labor, and where conical hats are shaped by hand following techniques unchanged for generations, and the dense urban fabric of the Old Quarter, where a functioning railway line cuts through residential streets at arm's reach from daily life. The Train Street corridor and the Long Biên Bridge provide the structural counterpoint to the village work: steel, rust, and artificial light against the organic textures of bamboo and straw. Shot across different times of day, the images follow the shift from the quiet craft of the countryside to the compressed energy of the city after dark, where the same railway becomes spectacle. The work does not attempt to frame these places as disappearing. It documents what remains active, specific, and particular to this part of northern Vietnam.