Phó Đức Chính

Sometime in 2018, the authorities of Hanoi's Hoàn Kiếm District commissioned local artists to beautify the electricity boxes on the sidewalks of a number of its streets. Gradually the project was expanded to more streets and other districts of Vietnam's capital. Featuring paintings of rich floral arrangements and dreamlike forest scenes, these otherwise nondescript power distribution utilities were turned into little oases of color, offering short moments of escape from Hanoi's fifty shades of concrete grey vernacularity. This brief series was made on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Phó Đức Chính Street in Ba Đình District. It's a collection of simple urban still lifes, images of banal non-places seemingly longing for a return back to nature...


​Created on 28 March 2021.
© Wouter Vanhees. All rights reserved. No part of this can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.