Saigon Archives No.1698 — A new chapter in the NSD51/50 editions
With the release of Saigon, a new volume enters the Archives collection — a series of collectible books each named after a city and conceived as part of an expanding photographic record. In this edition, Ho Chi Minh City reveals itself through a direct and unembellished lens, offering a portrait far removed from touristic narratives and official imagery.
The Archives series is grounded in an approach that privileges presence over interpretation, and Saigon continues this method through raw and powerful black and white photography. The absence of color reinforces the density of the city’s visual language: tangled electrical lines, layered architecture, humid light, and the constant flow of bodies and machines. The monochrome treatment intensifies contrast and texture, allowing the physical reality of the streets to dominate the frame.
This monograph immerses the viewer in neighborhoods shaped by rapid urban transformation, where tradition and modernity collide in visible and sometimes uneasy ways. Markets, alleyways, workshops, and informal gathering spaces form a complex social landscape marked by resilience and adaptation. Rather than isolating iconic landmarks, the work focuses on everyday environments, emphasizing how economic pressure, mobility, and community networks define daily existence.
A central element of the book is its engagement with the local tattoo community. Within Saigon’s evolving cultural fabric, tattoo studios act as meeting points where global influences intersect with deeply rooted personal stories. Tattooing becomes a language of self-definition in a city negotiating identity at high speed — bodies carrying symbols of memory, migration, rebellion, and belonging. These spaces are photographed not as subcultural curiosities, but as vital components of the urban ecosystem.
Through deliberate sequencing, Saigon unfolds as an experiential narrative. The images accumulate gradually, echoing the rhythm of the city itself: dense, layered, and constantly in motion. This immersive structure aligns with the broader philosophy of the Archives collection, which treats each book as both a visual document and a physical object meant to be handled, read slowly, and revisited.
By documenting the social and economic tensions present within these communities, Saigon seeks to expand the understanding of a city often reduced to simplified historical or exoticized views. It aims to show a living, changing environment — one shaped by labor, negotiation, and cultural reinvention — and to reveal the histories embedded in its streets beyond familiar depictions.
As part of the Archives series, this volume continues a long-term effort to build a constellation of cities connected through lived observation. Saigon stands as both an independent monograph and another fragment of a growing archive dedicated to preserving the realities, cultures, and human experiences that define contemporary urban life.
Size : 13 × 20 cm (5.12 × 7.84 in.)
Hard-cover silk matt
Paper silk-matt 105 gsm
208 pages
Language : english
Printed in USA
The first printing was published in 2025.
ISBN : 9798295076183
