Who says, streets are our most social lively spaces? Maybe. But they are also places of broken dreams, of empty selves, of collective solitude.
Taken in the border triangle of Germany, France, Switzerland, the photographs of Michael Nguyen show gloomy cityscapes, cold and bleak: Empty benches on the sidewalks, a tired bicycle, walls covered with barbed wire. Sometimes, there are people sitting by, walking down, which doesn’t make the streets livelier. The only sign of hope is children, who are pursuing their own activities without knowing what lies ahead in the future.
About Michael Nguyen
Michael Nguyen has been living in Munich since 2007 and has dedicated himself entirely to art again since 2018. He is an artist, not a photographer but more a photographic poet or something he himself could not define. He moves away from the mainstream, at the same time blurs genres. Most of the time, he focuses on small, ordinary things but through the subjective lens, give them new perspectives, a new soul. “Michael Nguyen’s photography is the art of showing more than you can see. Making visible – worshipping the invisible, he walks with the third eye of a wanderer through the visual adventure of life.” Since 2018 he is editor-in-chief of the Online Magazine for Photography and Art TAGREE. [Official Website]
Michael Nguyen about himself
“Our head is round so that thinking can change direction”, a sentence by the writer and artist Francis Picabia, who inspired me as a young man interested in art and the art scene. Art broadened my perspectives and saved my soul. In the 1980s and 1990s I was a journalist, poet, photographer, cultural organizer and bookseller. After almost two decades, I found my way back to art in the dark times of my life in early 2018. Yes, once again art has saved my soul. Everywhere I go, my eyes and senses are in motion. With my camera I capture little things that we often don’t notice in everyday life. I like to observe people and photograph them in everyday situations.
