Published:  00:00 Tuesday - March 09, 2010

A new exhibition is taking place at the Bui Gallery in downtown Hanoi to showcase the underlying mysteries on the city.

The Days and Nights exhibition gathers four photographers including Jamie Maxtone-Graham from New York City, Nguyen Na Son from Hanoi, Aaron Joel Santos from New Orleans, and Diego Cortizas from Madrid. Each of them has different views and subjects from the capital.

Maxtone-Graham contributes the largest number of images among all of the artists with 21 photographs, all taken from his Night Market series. They feature the views of labourers, sellers and residents within the Long Bien night market. His portraits are intense and confrontational, but they are not without a certain tenderness and tranquility.

Despite having only four photographs at the exhibition, Na Son, a resident Hanoian, says his works show a profound understanding of the city.

He has changed his style to become a simpler shooter, to show deeper feelings with fewer techniques, said Son, adding that the images are more potent than his previous works.

Having lived in Vietnam for the shortest time, Santos’s work depicts the capital’s changing urban landscape through the romantic eyes of a person still learning about the city. Working in total black and white, his images show a city rushing head along into the future while desperately trying to retain a large part of its history. The images feel at once lonely and desolate, but also filled with hints of hopes and joy.

Santos’s photographs have been shown in numerous international publications, as well as in galleries in the US, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Cortizas, by contrast, shows a secondary city through a series of reflective surfaces. He chooses the most symbolic places in Hanoi like the Opera House, Saint Joseph’s Cathedral and Long Bien Bridge. All of his works are on display as triptychs, placed in shuttered black boxes. When the shutters are opened. A skewed and reflective panorama of the city emerges.

For the show, the walls of the galleries have been painted black, and black curtains separate the four rooms, giving each individual photographer a space to curate their own works.

The exhibition will run at the Bui Galleries, at 23 Ngo Van So Street, Hanoi, until next Thursday.