Elska, Issue 57 – Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)

Elska is a bi-monthly male photography and culture art-zine on 130 pages of beautifully stroke-able matte paper. Each issue is shot in a different city with men from that city, including not only their photographs but their stories too. It’s a sort of cross between a quasi-intellectual queer pin-up and a sort of sexy anthropology journal.

In this issue:

Welcome to the 57th issue of Elska, our eleventh Asian adventure and our first time in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City — or Saigon, as it is also known — is one of the most energetic and surprising cities in the region, a place where tradition and modernity collide on every corner. It is also a city where being gay means navigating a quietly complex landscape: no laws against homosexuality, but no real protections either; and a culture that has its own particular way of making space for difference without properly acknowledging it.

Inside this issue, photographer and writer Liam Campbell introduces a selection of gay, bi and non-binary humans who he met during a week spent in this city. He photographed each in the streets as well as at home, dressed in their own style and also not dressed at all. As usual for Elska, they are a real assortment — a coffee shop manager from the city, a fruit seller from the countryside, a corporate type originally from Greece, a student from the suburbs, even a random Aussie tourist… Together they offer a quirky yet sincere portrait of queer life in HCMC, a city that is beginning to really explode as a destination for tourists and expats.

Woven throughout is a long-form narrative written by Liam Campbell that traces his time in the city and accompanies the photographs he took — there’s the coffee shops and monsoon rains, the moped rides and late-night hotel meet-ups, the connections made and the ones left deliberately unmade. Then interspersed within Liam’s stories are texts contributed by some of the participants, including three written in Vietnamese (and followed by English translations).

In classic Elska style, this issue is full of diversity, honesty, and nakedness — all delivered with a spirit that embraces imperfection.

‘Elska Ho Chi Minh City’ features thirteen chapters and the following elskans: Tín D, James Ng, Harry G, Trinh D, Vas K, Jesse T, and Liam D