Xe ôm (Saigonese Taxis)

This series of candid street portraits of Saigonese bike and car taxi drivers waiting around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City all day and night aims to capture the silence and quiet that has fallen over the usually frenetic downtown core, after the arrival of the pandemic and the departure of the crowds of international tourists and throngs of business people and commuters disappeared. Though Viet Nam has very successfully controlled the spread of the virus through strict lockdowns, quarantines and contact tracing, the tourism industry and its myriad workers, like these cabbies, have been left out of work, with their hands tied in a seemingly endless limbo.