A photo exhibition “Lost&Found Hanoi” by five Hanoi-based photographers will open at Hanoi Goethe Institute on April 15, allowing visitors to take an exploration of the grain of this thousand-year-old metropolis.

Through five different viewpoints and five different cameras, the photo book “Lost&Found Hanoi” published by Thing Asian Press will also make debut on the same day.

To the exhibition, visitors will enter into living spaces tucked away in alleys and have a chance to admire art installations that expose Hanoi’s natural world as well as to study the architecture that has developed over the centuries, and the graphic design that has become an integral part of the urban landscape.

In addition, people can watch people who are savoring a sidewalk meal, rushing off to work in a wild river of traffic, and working at jobs that have existed forever and at new occupations that will change the city.

The show also features the exuberance of boys taking flight on skate-boards, the trendy chic of hipsters in tattoos and elegantly tailored blue jeans, and the beauty of aging faces whose countenances have been shaped by decades of struggle.

On the night of the opening, discounted copies of “Lost&Found Hanoi” will be made available.

The five participating artists are Nguyen The Son, Elizabeth Rush, Matthew Dakin, Maika Elan and Aar-on Joel Santos. Son is an acclaimed Vietnamese artist who has been critically observing the changes in his urban environment for over a decade and his multidisciplinary art practices embracing silk painting, video art, photography, photo relief and photo installation.

Meanwhile Rush is a writer and photographer who has crossed borders with Bangladeshi cattle smugglers, built homes with Lima’s squatters, climbed abandoned buildings on Hanoi’s periphery, and participated in the performance art scene in Myanmar.

Dakin has a strong desire to explore his Vietnamese roots and captures an intriguing and dynamic Vietnam, whether in architecture, portraiture, or fine art photography.

Elan specializes in documentary and fashion while Santos aims to depict the strangeness and beauty in everyday life in Southeast Asia, a kind of attainable exoticism, a wonderful and weird world that is both familiar and unexpected.

The exhibition will run until May 18 at the Goethe Institute, 56-58 Nguyen Thai Hoc Street in Hanoi.

SGT/VNN