We are waiting out a long layover at the Hanoi Airport on our way to a shoot in Laos. James is trying to condense our scouting/shooting in Singapore last week into 200 words for the magazine, while I read the International Herald Tribune and try not to use up all my kleenex (I'm kicking a cold, so we decided not to take a cab into town exploring). James reports that the Banh Mi at the Bamboo cafe in the airport is not as good as at Hanco on Bergen Street.
Every other time I've heard Vietnamese spoken all around me was in the movies. What a trip! We can't help but be dorks about it. I know we're supposed to seem like jaded jetsetters, weary world-travelers but OMG We're in HANOI! What would our 19 year old selves think of us if they saw us now?
The Kodak people interviewed us back in the Spring, over the phone, while we sat at the big table in our apartment in Brooklyn.We rattled off stories about ourselves and what we did to get here. They've just published an article about us in their ProPass magazine. See "Partners in Life, Partners in Business" online at their website along with a slide show some of the photos we have taken with Kodak film these last 9 years. They seem to think that if our 20-something year old selves could see us now "after 9 short years" (really? didn't seem short to me!), they'd think we were living a "fairy tale." There's an editorial in the IHT called "The Referendum" today which posits that since we shouldn't look back (see: Lot's Wife) we look sideways, and evaluate our lives to the paths taken by our dear friends and neighbors. There's a winning view of James from where I'm sitting (at the airport in Hanoi OMG!!!!).
In the article I say that I learn a lot from talking to photographers, but omits the names of to those photographers with whom we've shared long standing conversations and poker games. I'd like to ameliorate that with a big shout out to Cedric Angeles, David Nicolas, Frédéric Lagrange, Zubin Shroff, Buff Strickland, Ball & Albanese, and Joshua Paul. There's a legion of other photographers we know, and some who feel like familiars. My thanks to them as well, but that's a list for another post, compiled from someplace with airconditioning.
