Working with incense in Vietnam

Incense is part of daily life in Vietnam. It is lit at the family altar to honour ancestors, at pagodas and temples, and on the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month, and demand peaks in the weeks before Tết.

In several craft villages, making incense is still largely handwork. Thin bamboo sticks are coated with a paste of fragrant powder, and the handle ends are dyed in bright colours, most often red. The sticks are then gathered into bundles and spread out to dry in the sun, opened into fans or arranged in rings so the air can reach them.

These drying yards have become a favourite subject for photographers, because from above they turn into pure pattern: circles of red, pink and yellow laid across the ground. The first photograph shows the human side of that pattern, a woman arranging red incense bundles, seen from above, her work giving the picture its shape.

The following frames are closer studies of colour, bundles fanned out to dry, and end at the point of sale, racks of incense ready for the altar.

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Photos: xuanduongvan87, vietfotos, tho on Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. These are not my photographs.