Public Interiors
I arrived in Vietnam without a photographic project. I was simply there on holiday. Then these nocturnal façades imposed themselves, naturally, without my looking for them.
For three weeks I walked through Hanoi, Huế, Hội An, Tuy Hòa and Hồ Chí Minh City after dark, a Ricoh GR3x in my pocket, no plan. What drew me back night after night were small scenes around the shops: a vegetable seller doing her hair inside her stall, men seated at a table on the sidewalk, a child playing with a stool while his mother arranges bouquets in her flower shop, someone doing the dishes outside, neighbours sharing a meal, a shopkeeper trimming her nails at her counter. Daytime commerce and private life share the same space. Night doesn’t close these spaces, it reveals them differently, with a kind of serenity, almost a form of poetry: people living where inside and outside blend, a public interior, with quiet, matter-of-fact ease.
I photographed head on, keeping the frame flat and frontal, so each façade reads like a small stage, although nothing was staged. No flash, no direction, no return visits to the same spot. Just walking, and stopping when something held.
These are places where commerce, intimacy and the public realm coexist without separation, visible from the street to anyone willing to slow down and look.
Three weeks is a beginning, not an answer. For now, what these images hold is closer to a question than a conclusion: what happens, at night, in these threshold spaces. The rest is still to be built.
tristanolphe.com — @tristan_olphe
Awards / Recognition for Public Interiors:
• Photographer of the Week, All About Photo
• Selected, Mark Power Prize (Beyond the Surface category), Urban Photo Awards 2026 — final ranking announced October, Trieste Photo Days
