American photographer Charles Fields spent five years travelling through Vietnam.
His captured images have been published in a beautiful large format book.

Click here to see the Ho Chi Minh City chapter.

Fields commissioned me to write the foreward to his book:

Photographer Charles Fields has journeyed through Vietnam for the last five years exploring this fascinating, beautiful and once-tortured land through his lens. Fields boated down the Mekong River, clambered aboard the Reunification Express train that travels almost 2000 kilometers along the coastline, boarded buses into the highlands, and walked dozens of miles through small villages
and ancient streets, and negotiated the famously cluttered city sidewalks to capture life on camera.

Vietnam’s highlights are portrayed here – the World Heritage Sites of the Imperial Palace at Hué,
the lush green limestone stacks that stagger out across Halong Bay, and the pretty, golden-hued
low-slung homes of the historic Chinese merchants’ town of Hội An.

It is evident from the wealth and content of Fields’ photographs that he has spent careful time getting close to his subjects. Most of Vietnam rises before dawn and Fields has worked with the ebb and flow of the early risers capturing the fishing docks, locals casting vast nets over splashing fish, a crouching Vietnamese man resting on a beach satisfied with his day’s catch, and a worker bent low over his rice terrace before the heat of the sun begins to scorch the mid morning hours.

At the other end of the day, Fields has entered into the nighttime neon-lit world of Vietnam’s fun-loving, coffee-drinking, ice cream-licking, motorbike-riding youth whose cruising on two wheels in
the economic powerhouse of Hồ Chí Minh City is known as song voi (living fast). The high-rise
towers, the swirling traffic and the electric light-lit avenues of the country’s largest city are all photographed by Fields as he works to convey the city’s energy and excitement.

Between dawn and dusk, Fields has wandered along Vietnam’s golden, palm-studded beaches, sometimes cluttered with tourists’ and locals’ paraphernalia, sometimes calm and deserted along
a remarkably undeveloped lengthy coastline. He has also snapped Vietnam’s world-class cuisine
as the day unfolds – in the market, on the platter, at the factory, and in the fields.

Away from the hedonistic excitement of Hồ Chí Minh City and the appealing urbane charm of Hà Nội,
Charles visited and photographed the rural peace of Vietnam’s forests and highlands, home to many of the country’s 54 ethnic minorities and their timeless rituals. Most ethnic minorities live in Vietnam’s countryside and are distinguished by their vibrant clothing, hair pieces, language, time-honored, mystical rituals and their musical instruments. Fields journeyed into these lands to record the Hmong, Dao and Tay at work with water buffalo in the paddy fields, and at leisure in their homes revealing the beauty and craftsmanship of their textiles and jewelry.

Fields has not just trained his lens on the beauty of Vietnam but focused too on the industrial clang,

photographing ships and industry. Vietnam’s industrial bases lie off the tourist trail and away from the architectural elegance of its historic monuments but big money commerce now powers this Southeast Asian land, one that is attempting to become a middle income country by 2020, less than 50 years after the end of a war that devastated its earth and its people.

Charles Fields offers “Vietnam Journeys” photography tours and seminars in Vietnam, with deluxe

accommodations, for photographers and aspiring photographers. Fields’ next book project is “Cuba”.

—Claire Boobbyer, freelance writer, editor and photographer and author of the Footprint Vietnam guidebook. She first visited Vietnam in 2004 when she fell in love with the food, fabrics and the
beauty of the country.
Her favorite places are Hà Nội, the far north near the Chinese border, and Hội An.
Her work can be seen at www.claireboobbyer.com.

Book: Vietnam Journeys

12” x 12”, 264 pages: 256 photographs with captions, featuring 48” panorama “Sunrise Over Mui Ne Harbor,” and 19 color location maps.

Retail Price: $50.00

ISBN: 9780982319673

Rights: World

Available through www.charlesfields.net

Independent Publishers Group- www.ipgbook.com

Phone: 800-888-4741, e-mail: orders@ipgbook.com

Claire Boobbyer

writer  editor  photographer

www.claireboobbyer.com

http://twitter.com/claireboobbyer

Author

Footprint Vietnam 2011

Footprint Laos 2010

Frommer's Cuba 2011

Frommer's Cuba Day by Day 2010