Not photographing under the light, photographer Long Nguyen photographs the light itself. In a place where darkness is not the opposite, but the starting point of a contemplative journey, he creates frames not merely to be seen, but to be felt, to be read, and to be immersed in.
Long Nguyen, a Vietnamese photographer and founder of Zinble Academy in Hanoi, belongs to the very small group of visual artists in Vietnam today who dare to approach photography as a philosophical entity and to experiment with light beyond limits. While most of the Vietnamese portrait photography market still prioritizes neatness, readability, and smoothness, Long Nguyen chooses a more challenging path full of diffraction, glowing light, and imperfection.
A visual experiment on the time-transcendent thin line
His works are not merely photographic, but rather a form of visual practice dense with analytical depth and deconstruction. Using the technique of controlled overexposure, he creates “wild zones of light” – where the viewer no longer clearly sees the subject, but must sense it through an energy field distorted by halos of light.
This approach evokes the experiments of post-photography artists, those who see light not just as a medium but as a message, as content, as the second body of the image.
Fragmented face with sensual recognition
A standout element in this body of work is the way Long Nguyen deconstructs the face. There is no complete portrait, only fragments of perception: blurred eyes, a nose burned out by light, a mouth losing direction. At first glance, it may seem like a technical flaw, but in fact, it is a tightly constructed visual statement, where the artist deliberately disrupts the facial recognition process to awaken intuition rather than perception.
According to the “Faciality” theory by Deleuze and Guattari, the face is not a place that expresses humanity, but where visual power is formed. By breaking the face apart, Long Nguyen simultaneously breaks the structure of power in portrait photography — an action with profound critical significance.
Colors and the material of emotions
Long Nguyen is one of the very few Vietnamese photographers today who dares to use color as a second emotional layer, detached from realistic logic. He does not use digital presets or rely on heavy post-production, but instead chooses to work with real physical light—using reflectors, raw lights, and direct manual intervention with the light sources. The face-flooding reds, eerie greens, and vision-blinding yellows are all the result of raw lighting techniques rather than digital processing.
This gives his works a high degree of physical vitality—something rare in the era of digital editing. Here, light is not just an element of emphasis but a sculptural material that fully replaces lines and expressions.
The contemporary Vietnamese
The presence of Long Nguyen, a Vietnamese visual artist, on the international art map is not only a personal milestone but also a testament to the emerging aesthetic power of the Southeast Asian creative generation. He does not try to “universalize” Vietnamese identity, but instead uses the complexity, contradictions, and chaos of the Vietnamese context to craft a distinct aesthetic—both local and global.
In this context, Long Nguyen stands as a representative case study for the new direction of Vietnamese photography: from illustration to ideology, from description to emotional transformation, from technique to philosophy.
“I don’t edit photos to make them beautiful; I let the light itself tell the most vibrant part that the model is hiding.” – Long Nguyen shared.
