I did not expect to be writing a book on the early photography of Vietnam, specifically one that covers the French colonial period of the 1850s to the 1950s. For more than thirty years I have been focused on photography in East Asia, principally China, Japan and Korea. Between 2007 and 2012 I was involved in producing a three-volume work about early photography in China. The effort left me exhausted and I felt in need of a prolonged break from writing and research. More or less on impulse, I decided to spend the 2012–13 Christmas and New Year period in Vietnam, travelling slowly from Hanoi in the north to Saigon in the south. I was enchanted – with the people, the culture, the architecture and the food. On returning to London, I could not resist consulting the existing references on Vietnamese photography (old habits are hard to break). Unlike some other countries in Southeast Asia, notably Thailand and Singapore, nothing of substance seemed to have appeared in English. Apart from a few small books on early twentieth-century postcards, nothing had been published in Vietnam other than a few articles. In France there were a couple of good books on the subject but I was left with the distinct impression that this was a field of study that had barely begun.

I started to study the subject and became increasingly fascinated and began to collect those photographs which interested me. There are more than fifty ethnic minorities in Vietnam, all with their distinct histories, cultures and modes of dress. Many of the early photographic portraits I encountered were simply stunning. There were also the turbulent events of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Vietnamese history, many of which were caught on camera.

The history of photography in Vietnam is inextricably linked to French colonial ambitions in Asia. France attacked Vietnam in 1858 and subsequently occupied southern Vietnam in 1859. By the end of the century it had extended its colonial influence across the whole of the country as well as to neighbouring Cambodia and Laos. After almost a century of occupation, the French were forced to leave in 1954 as calls for independence became impossible to ignore.