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C hicago-based street photographer Jack Ross first set foot in Vietnam in 2017, when he completed a TESOL course in Hanoi. Since then, his experiences in the country include deepening his understanding of photography, meeting his wife and co-creating an online archive for street photos made in Vietnam, known as Vietnam Streets. We spoke with Jack about inspiration, equipment and where he wants to take his craft next. Q. What first drew you to photography? A. A class in high school, in Champaign, Illinois. It was the first time anyone showed me how a camera actually worked – the mechanics of it, the developing process, why one composition holds and another falls apart. The pictures I made then weren’t good. What stuck was the permission to look at an ordinary place properly. Champaign is flat and quiet, and nothing obviously happens there, so if you want a photograph out of it you have to slow down and find it. I’ve been doing a version of that ever since – just in louder cities. Q. How do you describe your imaging style? A. Geometry, hard light and one person somewhere inside it. I’m drawn to lines – stairs, escalators, colonnades, the edge of a shadow across a crossing. I find the structure first and wait for someone to walk into it. A lot of my frames are a strong shape with a figure who is small in it, and I’d usually rather have the silhouette than the face. It’s candid, always. I don’t direct anyone and I don’t ask people to pose. Asking someone to act like a stranger to a camera makes the photograph untrue the moment you do it. Street photography is dynamic and chaotic – the chaos is the point. The motto I walk with is ‘expect nothing, appreciate everything’. I come home with nothing most days. That isn’t modesty, it’s just the arithmetic of it. Q. What is your intention for your images? A. Fairly modest, honestly. The camera is a tool I use to share how I see a place with the people who follow the work. I’m not trying to explain Vietnam to anyone, or to document it in some complete way – I don’t think I have the standing for that. What I want is for the pictures to be true to the moment they came from. Nothing staged, nothing arranged, nobody asked to perform. If a frame shows someone getting on with their day and it makes you look We talk to Jack Ross, street photographer and the curator of Vietnam Streets
Jack Ross
FUJIFILM Focus Magazine 29
September/October 2026
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