Description
It is a street corner of the kind old Hanoi has in abundance, but this one concentrates a whole way of inhabiting the city. The shop occupies the ground floor of an old house with closed shutters; a tree grows through the shopfront, red lanterns hang from the shelving, and the merchandise overflows onto the pavement in crates and display stands. In front of the shop, people sit down to chat; passers-by linger, a two-wheeler is parked in the green glow of a sign. Above, the flags bearing the yellow star punctuate the street with red. The photograph, taken at night, plays on these mingled sources — the warm white of the shop, acid neon, darkened façades — to isolate an island of life in the darkness. Commerce, here, is not a place one passes through: it is an open house, where family life is lived at street level.
