A small gallery in Ho Chi Minh City is showing 30 black-and-white photographs that read less like wall art and more like pages pulled from a private notebook. 'Thiên Di', the work of Nguyễn Lâm Trâm Anh — who goes by Cassava — is on display at Noirfoto Gallery until November 1.
The show is, in effect, a prize made real. Anh took home the 'Promising Artist' award at Noirfotocontest 2025, and Noirfoto organised the exhibition as her reward. The contest itself has been running since 2020 as a non-profit community project aimed at nurturing sustainable artistic development through photography in Việt Nam — no entry fees, no commercial agenda, just a pipeline for emerging Vietnamese photographers.
Anh selected these 30 images from thousands in her personal archive. Each is printed small, set on wide white paper borders, a presentation choice the photographer has described as giving the feeling of pages torn straight from her diary. The effect is intimate: instead of grand landscapes, you get quiet, fleeting slices of daily life seen from her point of view.
The title is doing a lot of work. Thiên Di translates as constant movement, but Anh also reads it as impermanence. That idea is the thread running through the show — time passes whether we like it or not, so the only real response is to be fully present in each moment. And since time is finite, every present second becomes worth keeping. Fittingly, the subject matter of the photos is exactly that: small, unrepeatable instants caught in monochrome.
For travellers, this is a good excuse to step off the well-worn HCM City circuit of markets and rooftop bars and into a contemporary art space run by a photography community rather than a commercial venue. Noirfoto is a working gallery with a competition and exhibition calendar, so even if Thiên Di is finishing its run by early November, it is worth checking what follows. An hour spent with black-and-white Vietnamese street and lifestyle photography is a different — and quieter — read on the city than anything you will find in District 1's more touristy stops.
The exhibition runs until November 1, so if Ho Chi Minh City is on your list for autumn 2025, this one is still in range.
