Hang Ngang street

Portraitists in digital age - Hang Ngang street

A portraiture shop that offers black and white portraits looks very modest and quiet besides colourful and noisy shops on Hang Ngang street, Hanoi That shop belongs to 75-year-old man named Bao Nguyen.

While most people flock to modern camera shops to have photos taken with digital cameras and beautified by photoshop techniques, some still love portraiture. And some painters still identify themselves with this old art. Mr. Nguyen is one of them.

He became a portrait painter by chance. Once walking on the streets of Hanoi Nguyen, at that time a student at Hanoi University, saw a street portraitist. He stopped to see the painter’s works and immediately fell in love with this job. He quit university to learn portraiture. 50 years later, Mr. Nguyen still pursues this occupation.

Some foreign tourists walking on Hang Ngang street pavement stopped at 47 Hang Ngang to watch an old man who was painting the portrait of Duy tan King based on an old photo. Familiar with noise, the old painter focused on his work, not paying any attention to the foreign passers-by.

“In the 1970s, I finished my portraits when bombs were dropping in front of my house,” he said.

Nguyen’s portraiture shop got famous in Hanoi in 1956. The painter said in the 1960-1970s, there were nearly 300 portrait painters in Hanoi.

He said the most important part of portraiture is that the painter must depict the “soul” of the subject. That “soul” can be reflected in the eyes, the mouths or the hands of people. The painter looks at photos to catch the subject’s soul and transmits it into the portrait.

Vietnamese families often bring photos of dead relatives to portraiture shops to have portraits to put on altars. To have a portrait, painters must finish many stages. They have to choose a good-quality brush and Croqui paper. Portraits are painted by soot of oil lamps or Chinese ink.

Nguyen said one has to practice for 3-4 years to become a normal portrait painter, 6-8 years or one’s whole life to become a skilled painter. This job requires patience and great concentration, painting and anatomic knowledge. Nguyen spends 4-5 hours painting an 18x24cm portrait and 2-3 days on 50x65cm portraits. Old, smeared photos through the hands of Nguyen become fresh and lively portraits.

Nowadays, portrait painters not only draw portraits of the dead but portraits for everybody and other kinds of photos like wedding and birthday photos, but the painting fee is cheaper. The number of portraiture shops in Hanoi is now a handful, 4-5 shops, mostly owned by old painters, who worry that one day portraiture shops will disappear.

(Source: KTNT)

Tag: Hanoi , Tour , Tourist , Vietnam , Vietnamese

Portraitists in digital age - Hang Ngang street

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