Greg Mo: The Colour Dreamer of Asian Streets
by Jerome D.
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Introduction
Greg Mo (b. 1981, Paris) is a self-taught French street and conceptual photographer based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Over the past fifteen years, he has built one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary Asian street photography — colour-drenched, surrealist in feel, and composed with an architect's sense of balance and geometry.
His images of India, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Burma, and China feel pulled from a dream: vivid, layered, intriguing, and always slightly strange.
Mo moved to Asia in 2008 during a six-month trip that became the starting point of his practice. He first came to broader attention with Sleep in Cambodia, a book documenting people sleeping in the streets of Phnom Penh in improbable positions, which appeared in 2011 and launched his more serious professional work.
His long-term pandemic project Khovid21 — a year-long daily street photography series launched on the first day of confinement in Cambodia on April 14, 2021 — further established his reputation for committed, sustained documentary practice.
His project Tonle Soap, a body of work addressing climate change and the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, was exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles festival in 2023, one of photography's most prestigious platforms.
He teaches street photography through workshops across Asia, and his commercial work includes clients across the region. He has published five photography books.
Mo cites Alex Webb for the complexity of his images, Harry Gruyaert for colour, Constantine Manos for shadow, and Richard Kalvar for humour — a lineage that places him squarely in the tradition of chromatic, compositionally intricate street photography associated with Magnum's colour practitioners.
Camera Gear Used by Greg Mo
Cameras
Leica M10 — Greg Mo's primary camera, confirmed directly in a 2024 interview with Hardcore Street Collective and on the Leica Camera US platform, where he discusses his work at length.
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| Leica M10 check price on Amazon |
Mo describes the M10 in specific terms: "I use a Leica M10 with a 35mm Summicron. Close to the use of a film camera, I particularly appreciate the Leica rangefinder which avoids having an electronic screen."
The absence of a live-view electronic viewfinder is important to his working method — he works entirely through the optical rangefinder, which keeps him present in the scene rather than looking at a screen.
The Leica M10's compact form and silent shutter support Mo's preference for working invisibly. As he notes: "I don't want to break the momentum while shooting and I'm trying to be invisible. However, shooting with a Leica requires me to bring the camera to my eye."
The M10 is, for Mo, the best balance between discretion and image quality for his colour-led, compositionally precise practice.
Lenses
Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 — Mo's sole confirmed lens, explicitly named in the same Hardcore Street Collective interview.
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| Leica Summicron 35mm f/2 check price on Amazon |
The 35mm focal length suits his layered, multi-subject compositions, where the moderate wide angle allows him to include background, midground, and foreground elements in deliberate visual dialogue.
The Summicron's optical character — sharp without being clinical, with a natural rendering of colour transitions — is well suited to the chromatically saturated, tonally nuanced work Mo produces in the intense light of India and Southeast Asia.
Mo shoots almost exclusively in colour, for which the Summicron's colour fidelity is particularly relevant. As he has said: "Colour is an essential structure of my compositions; the same images in black and white would not work, they would not have the same psychological impact."
Technique & Style
Greg Mo's photography is defined by three qualities that are immediately recognisable in his work: chromatic intensity, compositional balance, and a deliberate surrealism of atmosphere.
The colour is not incidental. Mo regards colour as a structural element of composition — a way of describing the identity of a place, the mood of a moment, the psychological character of a culture.
"India has bright colours, while Cambodia has duller, more neutral and less prominent tones," he has observed. His images do not impose a homogeneous colour treatment across different countries; they use the specific palette of each place as a descriptive tool.
The compositional approach is rigorous. Mo is drawn to very balanced frames where "everything responds to each other" — a sensibility he traces to his interest in design, painting, and architecture.
He cites Arne Vodder's furniture, the surrealists Dalí and Magritte, and the architecture of Le Corbusier as reference points. His street images often feel like carefully constructed tableaux rather than purely grabbed moments, even though they are made intuitively and spontaneously.
The surrealism is the quality that most distinguishes his work from mainstream street photography. Mo explicitly states his goal as bringing viewers into a dreamlike world with images that intrigue and question.
He avoids black-and-white, which he associates with a more austere atmosphere — colour, for him, is the medium of the imaginary and the oneiric.
His editing philosophy is minimal: "I never use software driver filters on my photographs because I want them to look natural without any retouching effects. I rarely crop my photos and I'm part of that old school that wants everything to look good from the original capture."
How to Imitate His Style in Post-Processing
Mo's images have a natural, unmanipulated quality despite their intensity. The colour comes from the light and the places he photographs, not from heavy post-processing. Pixlr is a useful tool for approaching his aesthetic:
Protect the colour balance.
Mo's colour is not pushed or saturated artificially. In Pixlr, use the White Balance controls to make sure colour temperature accurately reflects the light in the scene — warm in direct Indian sun, cooler and more muted in the diffused light of Cambodian streets.
Work the midtones, not the extremes.
His images hold detail across the full tonal range without crushing blacks or blowing highlights. Use Pixlr's Curves tool to create a gentle midtone contrast without losing information at either end.
Leave the colour channels alone.
Avoid the HSL tool for saturation boosts — Mo's aesthetic is about colour accuracy, not colour enhancement. If you push individual hue channels, you move away from his natural rendering toward a processed look he explicitly rejects.
Crop as little as possible.
Mo rarely crops. His compositions are made in-camera, and the relationship of the edges to the subject is intentional. Resist post-processing crops unless they correct a specific error.
How to Shoot Like Greg Mo
Think in colours before you think in moments.
Mo treats colour as architecture. Before raising the camera, notice the colour relationships in the scene — the way a red wall responds to an orange sari, or the way a grey Phnom Penh street absorbs a shaft of yellow light. Build your composition around those relationships.
Work with one camera and one lens.
The M10 and 35mm Summicron is Mo's entire kit for personal work. Simplicity forces you to understand the limits and possibilities of a single focal length deeply, which is where consistent visual language develops.
Shoot in colour as a discipline, not a default.
Mo's commitment to colour is philosophical, not practical. He has thought seriously about why colour serves his work and black-and-white does not. Commit to shooting in colour and think about what colour means for each specific location and project.
Follow your instincts, select later.
Mo describes his shooting as entirely intuitive: "I don't really know what I'm looking for, and I count on the surprise of the moment." The selection — the editorial decision about which images define the project — happens at home. Keep the camera moving in the field and be rigorous in the edit.
Look for the dreamlike, not the decisive.
Mo is not hunting the perfect single gesture. He is building images that intrigue and question. Look for scenes that have an edge of the uncanny — unusual geometry, unexpected colour relationships, figures that seem to exist slightly outside of time.
Spend time in a place.
Mo built his practice on years of living in and returning to Cambodia and repeated trips to the same countries in Asia. The specificity of his colour work — the way Indian light and Cambodian light read differently in his images — comes from deep familiarity with those places.
Legacy
Greg Mo is not yet a household name in the way that the Magnum photographers he cites are, but his work occupies an increasingly recognised position in contemporary street photography.
His exhibition at Rencontres d'Arles 2023 placed him on one of photography's most important stages. His five published books constitute a serious body of documentary and street work spanning Cambodia, India, and Southeast Asia broadly. His workshops have introduced his approach to a generation of photographers working across the region.
What distinguishes his contribution is the coherence of his vision: the combination of surrealist sensibility, structural use of colour, and compositional rigour applied consistently to the streets of a part of the world that is underrepresented in the global photography conversation.
He is one of the most interesting photographers working in Asia today.
Books by Greg Mo
By the Mekong : http://www.gregmophoto.com/by-the-mekong.html
Sleep in Cambodia (2011) — The book that launched his serious professional career. A deadpan, quietly absurdist documentary of people sleeping in the streets of Phnom Penh.
Ride in Cambodia (2014) — A follow-up to Sleep, continuing his observation of everyday life in the Cambodian capital.
Khovid21 — The book version of his year-long daily street photography project documenting Phnom Penh during the pandemic confinement of 2021.
Tonle Soap — His climate change project documenting the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, exhibited at Rencontres d'Arles 2023.
Conclusion
Greg Mo photographs with a Leica M10 and a single 35mm Summicron lens — a deliberately simple kit that forces all the creative decisions onto seeing rather than equipment.
His colour-first approach, surrealist sensibility, and rigorous compositional balance produce some of the most distinctive street photography coming out of Asia today.
He is proof that a clear and sustained visual philosophy, applied patiently over years in specific places, produces a body of work that is impossible to mistake for anyone else's.