Teerayut Chaisarn : The Sufis of Gujarat

Photo © Teerayut Chaisarn-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Teerayut Chaisarn-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Teerayut Chaisarn-All Rights Reserved

Teerayut Chaisarn is a young emerging photojournalist/photographer and Photoshop artist from Chiang Mai in Thailand.  He was one of the 6 participants in my In Search of the Sufis of Gujarat Photo Expedition™ a few weeks ago, and featured a number of galleries on his personal website. Some of the photographs in his The Religion of Islamic Sufis In Gujarat gallery are toned, while others are not. The photographs are also less portrait-biased than those in his first gallery, which he titled Faces of India.

You'll find some brilliant images in Teerayut's galleries...I haven't put it in this post, but the one of the elderly man in a mosque with the sun filtering through the intricately-worked jalis is a beauty...so look it up. I'm sure you'll agree.

Teerayut started photographing about 4 years ago, and is largely self-taught. He started work as a photographer on the magazine staff of his hometown, but preferred to become a freelance photographer. He also applied his Photoshop post processing expertise to assist various Thai professional photographers, and processes their portfolios. He worked on various occasions with Steve McCurry in Thailand.

Most of his galleries in his portfolio are post-processed, and while some may find these over-worked, it's a style which finds favor amongst many in Asia.

Katharina Hesse: Human Negotiations (& Interview)

Katharina Hesse is a photographer who currently works in China and Asia, and has been based in Beijing for the past 17 years. She graduated in Chinese and Japanese studies from the Institut National des Langues et Civilizations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris.

She has recently uploaded some of her gripping photographs of Bangkok's sex industry unto a 6 minutes-movie which she titled Human Negotiations (above), and during which she also talks about her project in a Skype-interview with Elisabetta Tripodi, and which appeared on the blog e-photoreview.

Human Negotiations is an experimental two-year collaboration between Katharina and writer Lara Day, using images and text to explore the lives of a community of Bangkok sex workers. I cannot begin to fathom how Katharina managed to gain the trust and confidence of her subjects to such a degree...and she says as such in her interview, and that the most important task in her project was to gain the trust of the sex workers and their clients. All serious photographers agree with her advice, since only full and complete mutual trust gained over months and months can make such intimate projects possible.

Katharina's has an impressive background. Not only is she a self-taught photographer (always a huge plus for me), but she initially worked as an assistant for German TV (ZDF) and then freelanced for Newsweek from 1996 to 2002. In 2003 and 2004 she covered China for Getty’s news service. Her images were featured in numerous publications such as Courrier International, Der Spiegel, D della Repubblica, EYEmazing, Zeit Magazin, Glamour (Germany), IO Donna, Die Zeit, Marie-Claire, Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique, Neon, Newsweek, 100Eyes.org , Reporters without borders(yearbook 2010, Germany), Stern, Time Asia, Vanity Fair (Italy/Germany), and Wired (Italy) among others.

Katharina's photographs of Xinjiang, Kashgar and Urumqi are probably the best I've seen of that region....so go to her website after you watch the above movie.

Thailand: Damnoen Saduak Market

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
The troubling events in the streets of Bangkok reminded me of the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market near the capital, which is a must-stop for foreign and local tourists, as well as food lovers. I've visited it almost every time I stop in Thailand, when I'm en route to Bhutan, Cambodia or Bali.

Yes, it's a tourist trap to a large degree but the food served by the women on their floating dugouts-kitchens is spectacular. I'm told that getting there very early in the morning will ensure a tourist-free experience, but I doubt it.

I'm traveling today, hence this short post.

Tom Hoops: Wai Kru Ceremony

Photograph © Tom Hoops-All Rights Reserved
Tom Hoops' biography is sparse....very sparse. His website only says that he's a freelance photographer, based in Bangkok and available for worldwide assignments. That's it.

However, his work speaks for him. Mostly black & white, with a few in color, Hoops has a natural affinity for portraits...striking portraits. A few of his subjects display enormous magnetism, and his Heads gallery is a must-see on his website.

But the gallery I liked best is the Documentary one because Hoops displays his work on the annual Wai Kru (homage to the teacher) ceremony at Wat Bang Phra, a Buddhist monastery 25 miles west of Bangkok. It is here that thousands of laborers, taxi-drivers, truck drivers, mobsters, small time crooks arrive once a year at the temple to take part in ceremony known as wai kru. They receive new tattoos, refresh faded ones, and get high or drunk.

(Tom Hoops gallery via Penelope Gan's blog)

I'm very familar with Wat Bang Phra (or Phro) and its tattooing monks. I photographed the monks at the monastery, and have a blog post here.

Richard Daniels: Buddha Factory

Photograph © Richard Daniels-All Rights Reserved
Richard Daniels is a British photographer who studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute in Australia, and is currently working out of Bangkok. He has exhibited his work at the National Museum Bangkok and participated in the International Photography Best of Show 2008 curated by Bill Hunt of Hasted Hunt (NY). His photographs were also recently published in the Lucie Awards Book, and in Through Our Eyes (Thailand Close Up).

I encourage you to visit all of Richard's galleries, although my favorite is of his recent Buddha Factory.

Andaman Rising

Courtesy Andaman Rising Org
Every now and then appears a visual project of such quality that I cannot wait to get its website on the virtual pages of TTP. Such a project is Andaman Rising, and is a project of UNC School of Journalism. A sensitive, and very well-put project by young journalists.

Three-and-a-half years after the Asian tsunami hit southern Thailand , a team of young journalists traveled to the seaside province of Phang-nga to document the lives and culture of people living by the Andaman region.

As per the introduction of Andaman Rising:

"By the salty docks of Phang-nga they found stories of determination. In Buddhist temples they found tradition. On boats and in schools and on the streets of tiny villages, they found surprises, sadness, laughter and hope.

Welcome to life by the Andaman Sea."

via The Click (link)

Eric de Vries: Thailand

Photograph © Eric de Vries-All Rights Reserved
Eric de Vries lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he's been travelling since 2000. He's working on a long-term project titled 'Still Life in Khmer Style' that covers landscapes, temple scenes and Buddha statues. He has already produced several series, most of them in black and white, and published 3 books so far.

The new series Breaking The Clouds (Over Ayuthaya) was recently photographed during a trip to Thailand, while the One-Three-Six-series is a documentary about Street 136 in the heart of Phnom Penh.

Both series will be ready for publication during the second half of this year, but a preview of the two series can bee seen on Eric de Vries' website