Hiroyuki Oki

Hiroyuki Oki

- Mel Patrick Kasingsing

By visually retelling the architect’s imagination, the industrious Japanese photographer is synonymous with the best in contemporary Vietnamese architecture

Ho Chi Minh City-based Hiroyuki Oki laughs when we ask him how markets his services online. His Vietnamese wife and business partner An Le joins in the mirth and admits, “We do next to nothing. I actually created his Facebook account for him!” Oki then responds to having too little time to maintain a regular online presence, though it would be false to call his online footprint miniscule. On the contrary, the attention his photos of Vietnamese projects have garnered on international architecture and design websites has cemented his status as the photographer of choice of Vietnamese architecture studios, big or small. He has worked with the likes of world-renowned VTN (Vo Trong Nghia) Architects to the ten-strong studio of Tropical Space, and has shot projects as large as university complexes to tiny cheese tart stores. But despite the heft of his photography portfolio, humility pervades the form of this modest man, a humility that is also laid bare in his photos of spaces, which in his own words, “is what I imagine to be what the architect sees.”

From trainspotter to shooting architecture

Hiroyuki Oki’s journey towards his architectural photography career began with trainspotting. “The first time I used a camera was when I was 9 or 10 years old. My uncle bought me a Canon AE-1, which I used to take photos of trains. I traveled a lot when I was a kid.”

This childhood hobby of shooting trains flourished into a desire to want to pursue photography, which Oki followed through when he went to photography college at the age of 20. He admired the works of SebastiÄo Salgado, to name one of his biggest inspirations, and wanted to become a documentary photographer.