Traveling through time: A 1995 photo depicts a driver of a xe lam (three-wheel motor vehicle) reading a book to relax. This kind of vehicle is no longer popular in HCM City. — VNS Photo courtesy of Thanh Tung

HCM CITY (VNS) — An exhibition of dozens of pictures of HCM City taken over the last two decades by a photojournalist opened in the city's Phu My Hung area yesterday.

Nguyen Thanh Tung, who has chosen 40 black and white photos from the scores he has taken since 1995 when he was a student, wanted to organise the exhibition entitled Chao Sai Gon (Hello Sai Gon) to mark the 40th year of the city's liberation.

Through them, the photographer lets viewers trace HCM City's rapid development. Some of the markets, bus stations, buildings, and vehicles from the 1990s remain only in people's memory.

The Thu Ngu flagpole beside the Thu Thiem Ferry, which had witnessed Sai Gon's ups and downs, was brought down to give way for the construction of the Thu Thiem Tunnel and other works.

The oldest photo on show is one he took in 1995 of a driver of a xe lam (three-wheel motor vehicle) reading a book.

Tung was then 18 and studying in the HCM City College of Culture and Art.

As for the vehicles, they have since faded into oblivion.

Tung said in the last 20 years he had witnessed rapid changes everywhere in the city.

"In several places, I saw nothing years ago. Now there are a lot of high-rise buildings at the same locations."

After seeing the exhibition, Le Xuan Thang, deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Artistic Photographers Association, said Tung's photos make people proud of their beautiful city.

The photographer was born in Kien Giang Province in the Mekong Delta when the war had just ended. He moved to HCM City in the 1990s and began taking photos.

He held his first exhibition in 2013 with photos he took during trips to the north.

The exhibition, at TajmaSago Castle, 6 Phan Van Chuong, will go on until Sunday before moving to Workshop Cafe, 27 Ngo Duc Ke, District 1, on April 3. — VNS