Solving riddles through photography

- In 19 years, Nicolas Cornet (photo), a French photographer, has walked on every road in Vietnam. His camera captures the Vietnamese life and people year by year. In his photos, Vietnam looks ethereal, perhaps because of his passion for this country.

An unexpected love

Nicolas Cornet

In 1987, Nicolas Cornet first set foot in Vietnam. He was hired by a younger photographer to design light for his photos on Vietnam. The two men planned to stay in Vietnam for 1 year for their work.

Yet, the appealing strangeness of this country’s people and sceneries didn’t let them go. The Frenchmen prolonged their stay to 4 years. A photo book on Vietnam was published. It didn’t bear Nicolas’ name as its author, but he was a gainer still. He had amassed a large collection of photos of Vietnam and learned to love this country passionately after traveling untiredly along the S-shaped land.

He started to publish his photo reportages and essays about Vietnam in such papers and magazines as Le Monde, D-La Republica, Madame Figaro, Geo, Grands Reportages, Mare, and Marian. Looking at Nicolas’s photos, one is surprised to find the Vietnamese life and people full of introspection and love. Whether a photo captures the crowdedness of a city, or the countryside’s freshness, whether it is about adults’ busy concerns, or children’s carefree playing, it exudes a holy love for the community and every blade of glass in the land. It blossoms brightly like flowers newly cut sitting on peddlers’ baskets waiting to be sold at dawn.

Nicolas looks at Vietnam from a narrow angle: a frown, a full-hearted laugh, a rough hand wiping away sweat running down the forehead, or an arm helping a white dress on a bobbing boat. He catches the heartbeats of daily life in images of those tiny tea shops at the street corners, people riding to work or the supermarket, and children jumping ropes on narrow hamlet lanes. He re-creates Vietnam through his own impressions and understanding of the country.

In Nicolas’s opinion, if visitors to Vietnam simply live in hotels, visit resorts, beaches, or tourism centres, and then return to their home countries, they understand nothing about Vietnam. To know Vietnam, one has to wander along hamlets, idle time away at roadside tea shops, travel to the countryside and live the country life. And in order to capture the changes in Vietnam in recent years, it is not enough to take photo of skyscrapers. One has to show these changes through the way the Vietnamese look or wear clothes.

Every year, he visits Vietnam 3 or 4 times to decode the Vietnamese people, so that people around the world, through his photos, can see the vivid reality of this country. He joked, “I am like a decoder of Vietnam and her people.”

In Vietnam, Nicolas either walks, or rents a motorbike or a car. For the last 10 years, there have been years when he spends most of the year’s time in Vietnam rather than France. Half his friends are Vietnamese. His “other half” is a Vietnamese doctor whom he met on a visit to Vietnam. He married her, brought her to France, but he himself keeps his frequent work trips to the country. He wife gave him 2 sons. Once a year, usually in March, he brings the whole family back to Vietnam. He said this yearly visit is the most important event every year in his family.

“Vietnam in my photos is the Vietnam I love”

In 2004, Nicolas published his first photo book on Vietnam. His publisher, Éditions du Chêne, printed 7,000 copies, which were quickly sold out. In 2005, 3,000 reprinted copies of Nicolas’s Viet Nam were also sold out. Surprised at the book’s success, Éditions du Chêne ordered Nicolas’s 2nd volume of Viet Nam.

At the beginning of 2006, Nicolas returned to Vietnam to finish this work. For now, he is keeping secret the content of the 2nd volume, which will be published in April 2007. As for the 1st volume, Nicolas compares it to a photographic tool explaining and introducing Vietnam.

The book explains just a little about Vietnam, creating curiosity in those who have never been to the country, and surprising those who have visited Vietnam but never seen the country in Nicolas’s way. The theme “Hanoi, Hue, Saigon” in Nicolas’s Vietnam is truly about the atmosphere and way of life characteristically Asian and Vietnamese, and seen by the heart and eyes of a European deeply in love with the land.

Nicolas told a story about a European contacting him to buy his Vietnamese photos. He asked what these photos would be used for. The man answered that he would print them on postcards. Nicolas then refused to sell, explaining, “Vietnam is not a postcard”. He also refuses to work in partnership with others on photo books about Vietnam if such works don’t require deep knowledge of Vietnam. Vietnam in his eyes is vibrant, changing everyday and appealing in every feature. Vietnam on Nicolas’s photos seems more beautiful and lovely than the real one.

Nicolas used to think that there are thousands of photo books about France on the international market, but almost none on Vietnam. That’s why he chose and loves his job. He wants to show his Vietnam to the world, because he loves the Vietnamese way of life, because he loves to wander on every path in Vietnam with his camera. 

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