Story  MAN · Manchester

Watching television in Vietnam, I recognized a place I’d photographed 4 years earlier and went looking for the pictures.

Written and photographed by Ethan Ward
Went: 6 weeks

I was on the couch in my apartment in Ho Chi Minh City, watching the last episode of Lazarus on Prime Video. My laptop was open beside me. Scooters went by in the street below.

Then Laz walked across a bridge at night, with 4 towers behind him.

I know that bridge.

I paused the show and opened my camera roll. Back to 2021. There was the footbridge at Deansgate station, the glass and steel, the towers of Deansgate Square I remembered seeing from elsewhere in Manchester. I had dozens of photographs.

And there I was in a navy peacoat and wool hat, the cold coloring my face, smiling. A full, unguarded smile. I hadn’t thought about that afternoon in years.

I teared up on the couch.

In February 2021, I was 7 months into my first long stretch of traveling alone outside the United States. I’d spent a month in Edinburgh and stopped in Manchester before returning to London. I’d planned to stay a few weeks.

I saw the towers from another part of the city and wanted to get closer. So I followed them until I reached the bridge. It was afternoon. People passed through while I set up my tripod and took pictures.

By the time I saw the bridge on television in November 2025, I’d returned to the United States and left again. I’d moved to Dublin and spent time in Paris. I’d also taken a job I thought I wanted and left when I realized I didn’t.

Looking at the photographs, I recognized someone who was already willing to follow his own curiosity. I could see it in the decision to walk toward those towers, and in how happy I looked when I got there.

I’d forgotten the afternoon without losing the habit. Now I was in Vietnam for the first time, still interested in what I might find when I went outside.

Read next: Most of what America taught me about Vietnam was wrong

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