Ngoc Minh Ngo

Everyone has their guilty pleasures- one of mine is spending countless hours on design blogs. And, at some point while shuffling between fuchsia throw pillows and petite salt shakers, I fell in love with Ngoc Minh Ngo’s photography. I originally found her on decor8, but her work has been featured in Martha Stewart Living, Elle Decoration, and Blueprint Magazine. Although she’s obviously busy and very much in demand, Ngoc was kind enough to share some stories from her past, advice for the future and a few little things that inspire her along the way.

Q: What has turned out to be the best advice given to you by another photographer? What advice would you pass on?

A: When I first started taking pictures, I happened to be good friends with the English photographer Paul Graham, who was one of the first photographers to use color in the classic genre of social documentary. I admired Paul’s social commitment, and we had many discussions on photography, through letters and conversations whenever we saw each other in New York or London. I remember once writing to him about my excitement of “capturing the world into the lens.” His reply set me straight and is something that I have striven to do (though very rarely successfully): “No, the aim is not to capture; it is to release the genie out of the bottle.” Of course he was right, and it is something that I constantly try to remind myself.

A few young aspiring photographers have asked my advice and I always tell them to look at a lot of photographs and to develop their own point of view. To do the latter, it is essential that they be interested in a wide range of subjects, to live in the fullest sense. It’s important to read, to look at everything around you, to take an interest in a wide range of things and learn as much as you. It’s one thing to be technically proficient, but it’s another to have real depth in your work.

Q: If you decided today to drop photography, what would your second career choice be?

A: It would be landscape design, which incorporates so many things that interest me, including history, art, design, culture, and nature – quite a few important aspects of life.

Q: For you, what is a perfect photograph?  How has this concept changed for you over time?

A: I don’t have any fixed idea of what constitutes a perfect photograph, apart from a personal preference that it should convey some idea or emotion. It could be technically flawed, like a lot of the English photographer Richard Billingham’s photographs of his family, but as long as it communicates some strong idea or emotion, I would consider it a perfect photo.

Q: Looking back at your career, what shoot are you most proud of and which was the most difficult?

A: There are a couple of shoots that I am most proud of. One was a story done for Martha Stewart Living, and it involved all my sisters and me having a Mother’s Day lunch with my mom. We shot it at my house at the time, and it was the first time my family got to see me at work and be a part of it as well. Also part of the crew were some very good friends, including the art director Scot Schy and the food stylist Susie Theodorou. Susie stayed at my house and made these wonderful meals. In the evening we all sat around the big dining table eating the most delicious food and had the best time.

Q: What themes have you explored in your photography so far?

A: My commercial photography revolves mostly around interiors, and I’ve always been interested in how people express themselves in their own home. The idea of home is fascinating to me. As the old saying goes, home is where the heart is. I believe that one can tell a lot about a person by seeing his/her home, and I love stepping into a home of someone creative because it is always original, distinctive and ultimately inspiring.

In my personal work, I am obsessed with the idea of memory. We all have mental images that are basically inner substitutes for the external objects. For example, we form a mental image of someone and that visual image becomes a part of us so that even when that person is no longer there, his/her image is still a part of our inner life. In the same way, much of what I choose to photograph for myself has to do with creating a memory trace of the things, places and people that I love. Lately I have also started taking a lot of photographs of plants because I am fascinated with the complexity of nature, particularly in the plant kingdom.

Q: What are 10 things that interest or influence you?

A: I used to see a lot of movies. When I was in college and before I had my daughter, I think I spent most of my spare time either reading or going to the cinema.  Like literature, film takes you to different places, geographically and mentally. I am a big fan of great storytelling, and every culture on earth has its own tradition of storytelling. Some of my favorite directors are Wong Kar-Wai (Happy Together, Chunking Express, In the Mood for Love, 2046), Jean-Luc Godard (Band à Part, Le Mépris and À bout de Souffle), François Truffaut (Les 400 Coups, Jules et Jim, and La Peau Douce), Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Magic Flute, and Fanny and Alexander), Federico Fellini (I Vitelloni, La Strade, and La Dolce Vita), Akira Kurosawa (Ran, Kagemusha, and Rashomon), Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, and Not One Less), to name but a few.

I also love the Italian Neo-Realists; Jean-Pierre Melville, who was part of the French New Wave but whose films are not well known in America; Chris Marker, whose highly original films defy categorization; and Terence Malick, whose films Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line contain some of the most poetic images on film. There are so many more. I love films and can get completely lost in them. Their images are burned into my memory, and I always fall for a good narrative. I also love the works of cinematographers Christopher Doyle (he shot most of the early Wong Kar-Wai’s films) and Darius Khondji (he started with maverick French directors Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro on Delicatessen and now works on big Hollywood productions). They both have a way with colors and composition that is highly original and evocative.

Another source of interest is books, and I always wish I had more time to read. Among the books that made a deep impression on me are Annie Ernaux’s La Place and Une Femme, her account of the lives of her father and mother; Roger Deakin’s trilogy on nature (Waterlog, Wildwood, Notes from the Walnut Tree Farm); Michael Pollen’s The Botany of Desire and the Omnivore’s Dilemma; and Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy. I also love the works of Jeanette Winterson, for her abiding belief in the redemption of art; Ian McEwan, for his masterful clarity; Marguerite Duras, for her evocative language; and William Trevor, for his sobering short stories, which remind me of Chekhov. There are so many others but I can’t list them all here.

Music is another big interest. I love everything from Bach, Mozart, and Schubert to Portishead, Bon Iver and Andrew Bird.  There is a long list of artists and photographers whose work I find absolutely fascinating, but if I had to mention just one photographer, it would be Robert Frank, whose work I find unflinchingly raw and incredibly moving at times. I just realized that this is a much longer list than what you asked for. But you can look at it this way: the 10 things are film, books, music, art, nature, history, food, family, love, and memory.