06-JAN-2008
Wood carrier, Long Xuyen, Vietnam, 2008
Daily life in this Mekong Delta city can be physically punishing for some of its workers. This young woman carries huge bundles of wood on her back from boat to shore, hour after hour and day after day. I never saw her flinch. I framed this image around counter diagonals – the wood on her shoulder flows from the upper right hand corner down into her arms, while the piles of wood already on the dock reach diagonally from the lower right corner, pointing towards her stoic face. Meanwhile, the railing of the dock slashes diagonally across the middle of the image, separating the wood on her back from the wood on the ground. The narrow frame of my vertically composed wideangle image compresses these diagonals, implying the tremendous pressure of the weight she carries on her shoulders.
19-DEC-2007
Shopkeeper, Old Quarter, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2007
The narrow streets of Hanoi's historic Old Quarter are crowded with shops. This woman is anxiously waiting for a customer. Every building in the old quarter carries the stenciled phone numbers of contractors who have made repairs on them. I noticed how the diagonal position of her forearms echoed the diagonal thrusts of those stenciled numbers, and thus pulled the image together through rhythmic repetition. This image becomes whole, instead of divided into two separate sections. The two diagonals created by the stenciled numbers also act as an arrow pointing to the anxious look on the woman’s face – the ultimate point expressed by this image.
06-JAN-2008
Flower arranger, Long Xuyen, Vietnam, 2008
I thought it was incongruous to find a strong man, sans shirt, arranging a delicate display of flowers in the Long Xuyen market. But the more I watched him, the more at home he seemed among the blossoms. The diagonals in this image are implied, rather than stressed. They are formed by his shadowed right arm extending into the flowers and by the rope he pulls back with his left hand. These repeating diagonals pull the eye into the flowers, relating the man to his task with a gentle subtlety that expresses his approach to his work.
06-JAN-2008
Childhood passage, Long Xuyen, Vietnam, 2008
I always look for the light first, and then the subject. In this case, it was the diagonal slash of late afternoon light falling on the side of a boat moored on the Mekong River in the Mekong Delta town of Long Xuyen. That diagonal pulled my eye to the scene, just as I knew it would pull my viewers into and through my image. It was only after I made the image and magnified on it on my LCD screen that I saw the tiny hand on the wooden slat and the two children looking back at me from inside the boat. I instantly lowered the camera to shoot again. The lovely light remained, but the children had already left the windows. This image reminds us of how childhood sometimes feels – locked away inside while looking out at an incomprehensible world. Not only are the windows barred with wooden planks – the diagonal bar of light acts as both another barrier as well as a symbol of the outside world that awaits them.
07-JAN-2008
Organizing with color, Chau Doc, Vietnam, 2008
I not only consciously look for light. I also look for color. The bright green clothing of the woman initially drew me to the scene – an outdoor kitchen on the streets of the Mekong Delta border town of Chau Doc. She stood between two green pails and window shutters painted in the same color as her clothing. She was reaching for a green dish with her right hand at the moment. I took a vantage point that made all of these green subjects – pails, clothing, dish, and shutters – align diagonally. The green color ties what would have been a very cluttered image into a coherent whole. Amazingly, all of these green subjects are the identical shade of green, which makes this image even more incongruously expressive. Her daughter, who was wearing a bright red shirt, was only a few feet away. Fortunately, I was able to frame the shot without her in it – she would have destroyed the diagonal and the point of the picture along with it.
