I recently went through my vast photographic archive, packing boxes upon boxes of tearsheets, prints, books and more, in preparation for an upcoming handover to the Briscoe Center for Documentary Studies. This was a bittersweet process for me as I looked through decades of my photographic work, but the sense of loss was accompanied by a profound attachment to the many stories I’ve had the privilege to capture with my camera.

One of the many boxes I packed included prints from a story on the motorbike craze in Saigon in the 90’s. These black and white prints were well-preserved and had survived two decades of storage. As I rifled through the prints, I realized many of these images were not a part of my official archive of my best photographs — which I refer to as the “DA”, or Digital Archive. But as time passes, so does our perception of images. I was able to rediscover many photographs I had brushed aside before.

This whole process led to my studio scanning negatives and new additions to the DA, expanding my initial edit for this story, and resulting in a new online gallery: “Saigon on Wheels”.

-Ed Kashi