Jim Sutton

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Today I work as a photographer and English teacher in Bắc Giang, a province in northern Vietnam where I’ve lived for the past several years. My photography is rooted in the community around me: the people, the landscapes, and the small, unhurried details of everyday life that visitors rarely slow down enough to notice.

Teaching gives me roots here in a way that travelling never could. It means I know my students’ families, their routines, their stories. That closeness informs everything I photograph, and it’s why so much of my work feels less like documentation and more like a conversation.