Forgotten Thai Masters of Photography

March 7, 2016 2 Replies

A fisherman at Bangtao, Phuket, circa 1962. Photo by Saengjun Limlohakul.

I missed the exhibition of Thai photographs on which this excellent book is based. They were on show at the Bangkok University Gallery in September 2015. The accompanying catalogue is the work of celebrated Thai photographer and owner of Kathmandu Photo Gallery on Pan Road off Silom, Manit Sriwanichpoom. Rediscovering Forgotten Thai Masters of Photography comprises a selection from seven neglected photographers, all male, quite a few of Chinese origin, operating in Thailand mostly during the 1950s and ’60s. Many of the reproductions are from glass negatives or vintage prints, the original negatives having been lost or wasted away. In the case of the monk photographer Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, this decay both of print and negative has been incorporated as an aspect of the work: all things must pass. Each of the seven photographers gets a mini-essay by Manit, introducing the geographical, technical and social contexts of their work, but also the circumstances of the photographer’s re-discovery. This re-discovery is in itself fascinating because it points to the fragility of the photographic art in a tropical climate, but also to questions of historiography, of whose culture to preserve. In a culture which sees things very much in a hierarchy from the top down, it is good to pay attention to the grass roots.

S. H. Lim’s portrait of Phusadee Anukkhamontri in Bong girl mode, circa 1967

All over Bangkok and throughout the Kingdom the visitor will see photographs of His Majesty the King with a camera. He has been a recorder of his realm’s many changes since the Second World War. One day a curated selection of his photographs will see the light of day. Photography in Thailand, as so much else, has until recently followed the royal narrative. Last year the National Gallery in Bangkok hosted an exhibition of John Thomson’s photographs of Siam dating from 1865-66, taken under the reign of King Mongkut. The court of King Chulalongkorn at the end of the nineteenth century disseminated the recording art. Photography in Thailand, therefore, is already a century and a half old. But how much of this filtered down? And how much has been lost by neglect and the ravages of climate?

H.M. the King of Thailand’s custom-made gold plated Leica.

What is refreshing about Manit Sriwanichpoom’s approach is that it is provincial in the best sense of the term, and varied in scope. His photographers hail from Phuket, Phimai and Bangkok, emerging from provincial Chinese-Thai photography studios, from a shed in the garden, from the proverbial drawer. One is a minor princeling, another a revered monk, still others were working in photo-journalism and the lubricious world of post-war nudity. It’s a mixed bag, but an interesting bag from the point of view of Thai sociology.

Sociology is all over this book. Tracking down photographer Liang Ewe (1911-1992), Mani mentions Phuket’s tin mining industry:

… the collection of photographs from Liang Ewe’s working lifetime (1932-1987) has now become a cultural trove of immeasurable value, both as treasures of art and as social document. This period coincided with the tin-mining boom reaching its height and then declining, in parallel with Liang Ewe’s retirement as Phuket closed its last mines in 1992-93.

Liang Ewe, Phuket woman in Baba-Peranakan style clothing, no date given.

Liang Ewe, Phuket woman in Baba-Peranakan style clothing, glass negative, 1959.

Liang Ewe was born Aree Khorchareon on Phuket, of Chinese Hokkian parents, and educated in Penang. The name change and the mixed cultural heritage point to the wonderful peninsular diversity of this book and of Phuket itself. Self-taught, he became a portrait photographer, therefore capturing the class aspirations of his sitters. “Local girls during the tin boom,” could almost be a song lyric. Ewe’s portraits show a diverse cross-section of Phuket society:

If the photo showed a man wearing a Chinese tunic, a Muslim headdress or a Sikh’s turban it does not mean he wasn’t a Phuket native; the island had seen a thriving mining industry for over a hundred years, and seekers of its fortunes have not only been local Thai people but those of various nationalities.

Liang Ewe, Phuket woman, 1955.

Ewe’s abandoned studio is still there in Phuket, “worn down by the tide of time,” as Manip puts it. He moots the idea of preserving the space for posterity as a “living museum”. Documenting the trove of photos stretching back decades, waiting to be brought to light, is a labour of love. Meanwhile, the glass negatives are beginning to be scattered and the studio is gathering dust. Unless there is grassroots interest and government or private intervention, this aspect of Phuket’s artistic and cultural heritage will fritter away in the tropical sun.

Photo by Rong Wong-Savun, The Memorial Bridge, circa 1958, Bangkok.

One of the discoveries for me in this book is the work of Rong Wong-Savun, whose eye, as MR Kukrit Pramoj said, “takes photographs with a Westerner’s mind”. In the above photograph of the Memorial Bridge it is the density of incident, light and shade which is appealing. The upward thrust of the bridge, the bamboo poles and the smoking chimneys on the Thonburi side, seems to express the crisp preparedness of the pedestrians. It reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s line about Londoners crossing Westminster Bridge: “Who would have thought that death had undone so many?” In 1957-8 Thailand was in the throes of yet another dictatorship. Field Marshal Phibunsongkhram’s time in office had come to an end and Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat was waiting in the wings with the usual musical chairs of goons, politicians and ex-military filling in the gaps. It is an optimistic picture from this unassuming photographer who seemed to have learned not to look at things straight on, but from an angle.

Only a few people knew that before my father became an author, he was a professional photographer who dreamt of becoming an architect. Although some time would pass until he became a writer, he would always have his camera beside him every time he was on a trip. He would bring the camera with him wherever he went, taking photos, together with writing in some journals. This set of photographs is pictures of Rama I Bridge after a renovation in 1957. I believe my father intended to capture the atmosphere of people who had gathered to see the bridge after it had been restored. I cannot assume what my father really wanted to communicate from these pictures but I do believe these can convey the story of an event from the past to the present. The photos act as a ‘bridge’, connecting both eras for today’s Thai people to understand the past of this big city called ‘Bangkok’. (Saroengrong Wong-Savun, the photographer’s son)

The Bridge, circa 1958, by Rong Wong-Savun

Long Wong-Savun was educated, as his 2009 obituary in The Guardian put it, “at the elite Triam Udom Suksa school in Bangkok. Despite demonstrating literary promise, he was expelled after an altercation with a teacher and was obliged to seek employment, including spells as a ship’s helmsman, log yard supervisor and model.” His photographic work was overtaken by his work as a writer, and he became national artist in the field of literature in 1995. His chiding critique of Thai society often took the form of satire and noir, and he was both prolific and a cult figure on the literary scene. The Guardian obituary again:

In the early 1960s – against a backdrop of repressive military rule, rapid economic expansion under the umbrella of American anti-communist influence, and profound social transformation, including urbanisation and the first signs of the emergence of an educated middle class – he produced several ground-breaking novels. Sanim Soi (1961) addressed prostitution, a particularly sensitive area associated with poverty and neglect. Concealed beneath an artificial edifice of public morality are the “paid women” who service the sexual needs of society. In the days before Aids, this was the first Thai book to address sexually transmitted infection. Bang Lampoo Square (1963), named after the inner-city Bangkok district, was a semi-autobiographical account of a school dropout living among petty criminals on society’s edge.

Pornsak Sakdaenprai’s country music-style portraits from 1965.

Pornsak Sakdaenprai is from Pimai, a northeastern town with the remains of a famous Khmer temple compound testifying to its position between two cultures: Khmer and Thai. His sitters have the lick and spittle of country and western stars, the negatives touched up to give them an upwardly-mobile sheen. Motorcycles, cigarette, a cowboy slouch and a Brylcreemed quiff are the appurtenances of this luk thung look. Luk thung is Thai country music. Like Liang Ewe, Pornsak originally had a Chinese name. He started taking photos at fourteen and selling them to passing tourists visiting the Phimai temple.

I opened the studio in 1959 when I was twenty-one by borrowing 20,000 Baht from my aunt. There was no electricity here then, so at first we made prints from sunlight. We’d use a mirror to reflect light into a drawer (in which the paper is affixed, to be pulled in and out of the desk to control exposure]… The chemicals for the developing process came from the Snow White shop in Korat. When i didn’t understand something I would go and ask them.

Slouching towards Korat: Pornsak Sakdaenprai’s country people in 1965

He worked with Agfa Gevaert glass plates, employed Vietnamese technicians to do the retouching, and posed his country folk in front of a Western-style painted city backdrop. The glossy results have a vintage kitsch quality which is very appealing.

Most of the customers who came in those days worked in the fields; their faces were dark, their skin burnt by the sun. We had to help make them look good. For example, some people didn’t have eyebrows and eyelashes, so we added them. If we didn’t do anything they wouldn’t be presentable.

Rediscovering Forgotten Thai Masters of Photography is a fine selection of the work of these neglected photographers and of the fleeting time they captured. The book is available in Bangkok bookshops and at Kathmandu Photo Gallery in Bangkok.

Photo by Mom Luang Toy Xoomsai (1906-1961), circa 1946-1961.

Schwarzenbach’s America

July 26, 2015 2 Replies

Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) was a Swiss writer who visited the United States on two occasions before her untimely death at age 36. Her first visit was in 1936-1937 in company with the American photographer Barbara Wright, with whom she was having an affair. Schwarzenbach’s second visit was shorter, from late May 1940 into 1941, at the beginning of the war, when Paris had already fallen to the Germans.

Annemarie Schwarzenbach on Nantucket, 1940.

During that first photo-journalistic trip she observed American labour relations, the effect of Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the conditions of the rural and mining poor in the South and in Pittsburg. Schwarzenbach was reporting on assignment for Swiss papers, among them the National-Zeitung and the Luzerner Tagblatt. Some of Schwarzenbach’s photos are stunning. The pair must have turned heads in the rural and industrial south.

Barbara Wright photographed by Annemarie Schwarzenbach, November-December 1937

But the Swiss reporter’s analysis of American society and economics seems a mirror image of our own troubled times for the poor and the dispossessed. Schwarzenbach was a committed Left-winger, at a time when Europe had swung to the right. Her comments on the labour union politics of John L. Lewis, on sharecropping, on the dearth of social safety nets are particularly interesting eighty years later.

But the pioneering time is over: the West has been won. Social upheaval has taken place and henceforth workers remain workers or join the army of eight million unemployed – the landless farmer, in debt, whose holding has been ravaged by dust storm, erosion and flood, who has lost all hope of owning the land. The middle class remains where it is while a small number of investors form the new aristocracy.

Tuskegee, Alabama, 1937

Negro boys at the port, Charleston, South Carolina, 1937

The Swiss community of Gruetli in Tennessee, photo by Annemarie Schwarzenbach, 1937

During her second American stay in 1940, she met up with her old friends Erica and Klaus Mann in New York. She met the writer Carson McCullers, who fell in love with her. McCuller’s follow-up novel to her Book of the Month The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was Reflections in a Golden Eye, which she dedicated to the striking-looking Schwarzenbach. They met at the Bedford Hotel in New York City.

We agreed to meet the following day for lunch, and fixed a time an hour before I was to leave New York. I had a coffee and she had a glass of milk and a slice of buttered bread, which she left untouched. While she wrote down her address, I noticed her hands trembling and that her handwriting was barely legible. While I spoke, she leaned in with her pale child’s face and fixed her big grey eyes on my lips, as though she was hard of hearing.

Carson McCullers, about the time she met Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Schwarzenbach spent the summer on Nantucket and wrote two of her best pieces on the island, where she rented a cabin in Siasconset. The first is a fine description of Nantucket life at the beginning of the war:

And the gardens: unforgettable. They bear no relation to the enormous green expanses of the English lawn, to the geometrical arrangements of Mogul-style gardens in India, or the hanging gardens of Semiramis. They recall most of all the gardens of farmers in the Emmental. But in Emmental there aren’t as many roses as there are on Nantucket. Wild briar roses grow in profusion over picket fences, climbing on the roofs of sea captains’ houses, on barns, farmhouses.

il_fullxfull.131901277

Following this second round of reporting from the United States, she returned to Switzerland and headed off again to Portugal, the Congo and Morocco. But it was in Switzerland, in the Engadin, that she fell off her bicycle and died as a result of injuries, at age thirty-four, in 1942.

03_353

Siam through the Lens of John Thomson

January 18, 2015 3 Replies

Siamese youth, photo by John Thomson. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library.

An exhibition of John Thomson’s photographs of Siam is running at the National Gallery in Bangkok. Thomson was a Scottish photographer, born in Edinburgh in 1837. He apprenticed to an optical and scientific instruments manufacturer and in 1856 followed evening classes at the Watt Institution and School of Art. His older brother was a photographer in Singapore, and in 1862 John followed in his footsteps. They were part of that diaspora of Scots, Irish, second sons and convicts who made up the rump of the British Empire.

Chests John Thomson used to carry his photographic equipment. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library.

The nautical instruments business in Singapore led to his own photography studio, capturing the ex-pats of the day in their imperial finery. But John Thomson had that quality so few people retain beyond childhood: curiosity. Ten years travelling in the Far East followed. His lens took in a broad spectrum of human life that had never seen a camera: kings, princes, mandarins and beggars.

He travelled to Siam in September 1865. The 65 photographs on show at the National Gallery in Bangkok date from a time when you could probably count on one hand the cameras in the country. Thomson used both full plate and stereo cameras, and a method called ‘wet-collodion’ to produce a negative on glass. The cumbersome cameras (made from hardwoods) and equipment, including chemicals, made his travels across difficult terrain all the more awkward. In Petchaburi he had six men to carry the equipment for him.

A group of monks and novices, 1867.

Thomson is an early street photographer and anticipates the photojournalism of the twentieth century. At the same time, his photographs formed the Victorian image of the Far East. Behind the coloniser is the missionary, the mapmaker and the photographer. Thomson’s endeavour was to record and classify with the eye of nineteenth-century social anthropology. In his later publications this orientalising tendency became more pronounced.

Frontispiece of John Thomson’s The Straits of Malacca (1875). Image courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Writing from Brixton in 1874 – the year of the Japanese invasion of Taiwan – Thomson thought that “at last the light of civilisation seems indeed to have dawned in the distant East”. He took a number of photographs of men in the infamous Cangue punishment, a wooden board around the neck which prevented the person from eating or drinking unaided.

Two men punished with the Cangue in China. Photo by John Thomson.

His arrival at Paknam on the mouth of the Chao Phraya River is still vivid and full of detail, immediately recognisable to any old Thai hand:

The Menam, or Mother of Waters, is for some miles above its entrance a broad, sluggish, and uninteresting stream, flowing between low banks, and flat alluvial plains. When I visited Siam in the steamer ‘Chow Phaya,’ I went ashore at Paknam, the first town on the river, and made the acquaintance of a native officer who had charge of the customs station, and who honoured me with an audience at his residence. There I found him surrounded by a group of crouching slaves, by half-a-dozen children, and by as many wives … nor were tokens of refinement wanting, in embroidered wedge-shaped cushions, couches covered with finely-plaited mats, wrought vessels of gold or silver, and robes of silken attire. The cool and peculiar fashion of dressing the hair, adopted by both sexes, alike resembled an inverted horse-brush laid upon the crown of the head.

A Siamese boatman with his oar, photo John Thomson, circa 1865. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library.

A Siamese nobleman, photo by John Thomson, circa 1865. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library.

A Siamese nobleman, Racha Chaya, photo by John Thomson, circa 1865. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library.

On journeying upriver to Bangkok, he enquired about the building materials of the many temples. “I learnt to my disappointment that these temples are nothing more than brick and mortar embellished with gilding, foreign soup plates, and bits of coloured glass.”

Thomson describes Wat Saket just outside the old walls of Bangkok, and site of the ‘yellow-shirt’ protest movement of last year when thousands sat hectoring, trying to remove the ‘red shirt’ Prime Minister.

The principal building at Wat Saket is a huge unfinished pile of bricks and mortar – intended, as I suppose, to symbolise Mount Meru, the centre of the Buddhist universe – the summit of which commands an extensive view of the palm groves, and house roofs of Bangkok …a court at the rear, where the bodies of the dead, who have no friends to bury them, are cast out to the dogs and the vultures to be devoured … in the centre stood a small charnel house, while the pavement round about was covered with black stains and littered with human bones, bleached white by the sun.

‘Photography and Exploration’, a wood-engraving from Gaston Tissandier, History and Handbook of Photography (1876) edited and translated by John Thomson.

Soon he had an audience with Rama IV, King Mongut, who reigned from 1851- 1868. King Mongut is best known outside Thailand for his portrayal in the film The King and I, based on a fictionalised account of Anna Leonowens’ diary as a tutor at court. Leonowens is notoriously unreliable with the truth. Authenticity is a tricky subject, and nowhere more so than in Thailand where the written record can be sketchy. Historiography and hagiography are in dire need of disentanglement. Leonowens was in court attendance from 1862 to 1867 so she might have run into the young photographer in the gilded halls of power.

His Majesty was pleased to appoint a day on which I should take his own portrait as well. The King requested me to visit his abode on Monday, October 6, in the company of the Krummun-alongkot, a nobleman holding the position of chief astronomer, that is, head of the astrologers attached to the palace.

Siamese monk, 1865.

Thomson gives us a wonderful description of the interior of the Krummun’s room – a mix of East and West – at a time when Siam was looking to modernise but also to fend off the competing colonial powers of France (Cochin China) and England (Malaya & Burma).

In one corner there was a telegraphic machine, backed by a statue of Buddha. In the lap of the image there was a Siamese flute (the idol was off duty and under repair), and an electro-plated coffee-pot, which had evidently been forced into some unnatural use. There were also watch-tools, turning-lathes, and telescopes, guitars, tom-toms, fiddles, and hand-saws; while betel-nut boxes, swords, spears, and shoe-brushes, rifles, revolvers, windsor-soap, rat-paste, brass wire, and beer bottles, were mingled in heterogeneous confusion.

Rama IV, King Mongut, in royal attire on October 6, 1865. Photo by John Thomson. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library.

Rama IV, King Mongut, in Siamese regalia on October 6, 1865. Photo by John Thomson. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library.

Having photographed the king in two different attires – Siamese court robes and “a sort of French Field Marshal’s uniform” – Thomson was all the rage among the princelings, nobility, khunyings and assorted courtiers.

Rama IV, King of Siam, in European attire, 1865. Photo by John Thomson.

Rama IV, King of Siam, in European regalia, 1865. Photo by John Thomson.

The king invited him to attend the So-Kan or tonsure festival of the heir-apparent, Prince Chowfa Chulalongkorn, who “was deprived of the top-knot of his boyhood for the first time”.

Among the other photographs which I took on the spot, one represents his majesty as he receives his son and places him on his right hand, amid the simultaneous adoration of the prostrate host. Mrs. Leonowens, who ought to have known better, has made use of this photograph in a work on Siam which recently appeared under her name, and described it wrongly as ‘Receiving a Princess.’

Presentation of a prince (heir-apparent Prince Chula?) to Rama IV, 1856.

Presentation of a prince (heir-apparent Prince Chowfa Chulalongkorn?) to Rama IV, 1856.

Thomson witnessed a number of these topknot-cutting ceremonies performed with full Brahmanical rites. I attended a royal-sponsored rite of tonsure myself back in 1988, in the Brahmin temple near the Giant Swing. It’s a delightful ceremony. You can read about it here.

Siamese teenager with the traditional topknot. Attributed to John Thomson.

Thomson’s description of corruption in Siam reminds us that little has changed and that graft has deep roots.

I remember visiting a magistrate’s court in Bangkok, where a case of some importance was under investigation, and I noticed the same agencies at work there as in China, only that in the latter country the system of corruption is managed … with a degree of subtle polish and refinement.. the prisoners were shut up in a sort of cattle-pen in front, while their friends and supporters, laden with gifts of fruits, cakes, or other produce, crawled through the court in a continuous procession and presented their offerings for inspection as they passed the judge’s chair.

As I write, the former Prime Minister is being arraigned for ‘financial negligence’ by the current military regime. It’s a Siamese cat and mouse game.

Wife of minister at the court of Siam, 1865.

L0055544 Brother of the 1st king, Siam, [Thailand]

Thomson travelled to Petchaburi, a town I have been in and out of for a quarter century now, and for which I retain a particular affection second only to Ratchaburi. I didn’t know that Petchaburi benefited from an injection of English town planning, as Thomson explains:

The chief town, unlike Bangkok, was mainly built on land, and in some parts bore quite an English look. Thus, there were rows of well-built brick cottages, and a stone bridge across the river, broad enough and strong enough to sustain the traffic even of a metropolitan thoroughfare. The builder of this new town was a very clever young noble, who had visited England with the Siamese embassy, and who, at the time of my visit, was the deputy-governor of Petchaburee.

I wonder what happened to that lovely English bridge and the stone it was made from. I suspect the coming of the railways did away with it.

The river and bridge at Petchaburi, 1857. Photo by John Thomson.

The river and bridge at Petchaburi, 1867. Photo by John Thomson.

Thomson went on to photograph Angkor Wat in Cambodia, China and the East End of London. He clearly had an observant eye, an affinity for kings and ordinary people alike, and a sharp technique. His Siamese photographs capture the country and its people as they were at the dawn of the modern world, as they will never be again.

The monk and the prince.

Monks and temple boys.

A Siamese prince, heir-designate Prince Chowfa Chulalongkorn, 1865.