Each album carries countless stories. Because in the eyes of the writer, just one detail on any photo can store, reproduce, and suggest a history of the landscape, place, and people in the vast and complex flow of time. Images contain historical data - that is a thorough and precise way of saying it.
The thesis “Da Lat, the city in the album: Landscape, flavor, people and current events” is a combination of memories and images of old Da Lat.
Author Nguyen Vinh Nguyen "examines" old albums to "discuss the landscape, lifestyle, people and times". The book is divided into two main parts: Landscape & Style and People & Times. The book is not a work of photographic art but a journey to find the urban culture and spiritual heritage of Da Lat city.
In the first part, Nguyen Vinh Nguyen mentions the role of Ho Xuan Huong and Doi Cu in the memory of the Da Lat community - the intersection between existence and nostalgia. The appearance of French schools and typical Chinese dishes helped shape a diverse Da Lat culture. The author also looks for the traces of the French and Chinese in the structure of the city's culinary culture.
Originating as a place to provide temperate foods to compensate for the nutritional and spiritual deficiencies of the French in the colony (which had to be imported from France at first), French food has moved from restaurants to family dining tables. A strange thing is that in the cold of Da Lat, eating ice cream has become a pleasure of Da Lat people and Da Lat has famous ice cream shops.
The author also studied the collection of Dalat postcards, most of which are landscape photos with romantic captions and poems, along with the sentiments of anonymous senders, which are equally romantic. The words of pagodas and churches in Dalat also enter the consciousness of Dalat people, along with fog and rain creating a poetic soul and a delicate, gentle feeling.
In the following part, Nguyen Vinh Nguyen writes about interesting characters of Da Lat whose lives reflect not only a fate, a family situation but also historical events of the country such as: The story of a head of the Department of Culture who does not care about politics but loves culture and arts; the owner of the Hoang Anh radio repair shop on Minh Mang slope; the owner of the Tailor Son veston tailor shop; Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen Tuong Thiet (son of writer Nhat Linh) - Nguyen Thai Van returning to visit Da Lat, the place where they lived during their youth...
The final part is an appendix with 67 beautiful and rare photos of Dalat taken from family albums and collectors' photo archives.
A special value in the book is the system of photos in the book. Nguyen Vinh Nguyen is absolutely right when calling it an album distilled from hundreds of albums. And having distilled like that, we can understand the rarity and beauty of those photos. Not "satisfied" with putting photos in each article, Nguyen also made a small photo appendix of 64 photos.
