Kevin German

© Kevin German

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam-based photographer Kevin German knocked on my door on a Sunday afternoon after landing from a 32-hour flight from Saigon on Friday, then making pictures all day and late into the night Saturday. He was exhausted, dead on his feet at my doorstep.

Yet, when we started talking about and looking at his body of work about Vietnam it’s as if he’d gotten a shot of adrenalin. Energy came from somewhere, in spite of being drained by jet lag and lack of sleep.

Our goal was not to produce a final edit of the work. He’s still a year from being done. This was a check-in to see what’s working, what needs to be done, to talk about how to approach such a broad subject and come out of it with a complete set of pictures, how to evaluate progress, how to push the seeing going forward.

I took a group of 400 of his pictures down to about 100 and grouped them by broad themes in rows and then moved the stronger images forward in those groups and rows. This process makes it clear what types of pictures there are and which ones are succeeding. It also points out what’s missing, the most critical thing in working on a long term project.

Kevin got back on the plane to Saigon Monday and I’ll bet that he was making new pictures Tuesday.

He is a member of Luceo Images.