Description
There are seven or eight of them, parked at an angle along the pavement, each in his numbered machine. The xích lô — the Vietnamese cycle rickshaw — places the customer at the front; the slack hour reverses the roles, and it is the drivers who occupy the seat, legs stretched out over the handlebars, caps pulled down, phone in hand or eyelids closed. Above them, silk lanterns pierce the darkness and lay a soft light on the white wall that black and white transforms into stage lighting. The street is empty, the scene almost motionless; only the postures vary, from one man to the next, like the tenses of a single sentence. It is a collective portrait of a trade of waiting, in which the essence of the work is simply to be there — and where the night, for once, belongs to those who pedal.
