The name Neon Wind comes from the fact that many of the stores that I began documenting still retained old fluorescent lights which reminded me of the neon lighting associated with Hong Kong or Tokyo of the 1970s. I saw these places as almost structured chaos, full of colour and detail and very different to the minimalist trends present in many modern shops.

I took some photos of these stores during and just after Covid and loved the results I got back, the colour casts caused by fluorescent lighting on film stocks like Fuji C200 just seemed magical to me, so I decided to leave them in and make them part of the project. I really saw that suddenly every village, every city suburb became a place to find little islands of colour and light that I wanted to cpature and have been doing so ever since.

I have since deveopled technically, moving to higher speed film stocks like Portra 800, using faster and wider lenses than my Pentacon 1.8 50mm I started off with and using filters. I still shoot the majority of this project on my Zenit-E however, since I prefer its compact and inconspicuos nature, making it easier to communicate shooting and making me look more approachable.

I am currently working with a few people within the Vietnamese community to further document the stories behind these stores with the intention to publish a printed book on the subject in the future.