Incense, smoke and fire

Few objects are as present in Vietnamese daily life as the incense stick. It is lit on the family altar on the first and fifteenth of every lunar month, at temples and pagodas, at graves, and on every important day of the year.

Before it is burned, it is made. In craft villages around Hanoi, such as Quảng Phú Cầu, thin bamboo sticks are dyed red, pink, green and yellow, coated with aromatic powder, then gathered into bundles and fanned out in courtyards to dry. Seen from above, the yards become fields of colour, which is why the villages now attract as many photographers as buyers.

In temples, the incense often takes another form: large coils hung from the ceiling, burning slowly for days and carrying a written prayer.

The last two frames move from culture to physics: the moment a match catches, and the smoke that follows. Photographers love smoke for the same reason worshippers do. It makes the invisible visible, just for a moment.

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Photos: michoff, roegger, christoph on Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. These are not my photographs.