Reading room & artist talk “Points of Relation” at DACC 2026

Điểm Tương Quan is an open reading room and exchange space dedicated to artist publications and photobooks created by contemporary photography practitioners in Vietnam over the past three years.

Curated by Lê Nguyên Phương and Mai Nguyên Anh, the selected publications explore a wide range of stories about memory, family, homeland, community, labor, urban life, and the transformations of everyday life.

Alongside opportunities to read and browse the books, the program features two artists, Nguyễn Ngọc Hải (Hải Ô) and Lâm Nguy, who will introduce their own publications and share insights into their creative processes, from initial concepts and project development to image editing and publication design.

Through this conversation, the program seeks to broaden the public’s understanding of photographic publications—not merely as products containing images, but as forms of artistic practice, reflection, and storytelling through photography.

About the guest artists

1. Nguyễn Ngọc Hải (Hải Ô)

Nguyễn Ngọc Hải (Hải Ô) (b. 1995) is a visual documentary photographer, independent photobook maker, and organizer of photography-related activities. He leads LADI Record, an independent publishing project, and co-founded dédé Photos Collective. His practice documents rural communities, particularly along the central and southern coasts of Vietnam, exploring the relationships between living environments, local spiritual practices, and environmental change. His notable projects include the photobook and exhibition MƯA (RAIN), the project HOMECOMING, and the art photobook Ở Sài Gòn (The Saigon of My Youth). He was nominated for Outstanding Artist of the Year at Hanoi Grapevine’s Finest 2024–2025.

2. Lâm Nguy

Lâm Nguy, also known as Idoomythang, is a photographer and image-maker working across genres, with a particular interest in popular culture, music, and the entertainment industry.

Moving between studios, social spaces, and outdoor landscapes, he approaches each environment as an impromptu stage, where the camera becomes a tool for exploring people, atmospheres, and the relationships that emerge between them. His practice seeks to capture intangible energies such as desire, intimacy, rhythm, and collective emotion, reflecting on the ways life is experienced and performed. Rarely static, Lâm’s photographs convey a persistent sense of movement and the vitality of life in constant motion.

About the moderator

Mai Nguyên Anh

Mai Nguyen Anh is a Vietnamese visual artist whose practice combines documentary photography with subjective interpretation to explore personal narratives and social paradoxes. He began his career as a photojournalist, working for AFP in the Middle East and VnExpress from 2012 to 2015, and received a scholarship from the International Center of Photography in New York in 2015. His work has been published in Financial Times, Bloomberg, and The Guardian. In 2016, he co-founded Matca, a community-based photography project in Vietnam. In 2018, he received the Open Category award at the Objectifs Documentary Photography Award in Singapore. Since 2021, he has collaborated with PhotoHanoi as a curator.