With the recent plan to possibly purchase a high end digi SLR (maybe a used Mark 2 and 24mm F1.4 for $2000), photo ideas are flooding my mind.
A few years back when I met with Mimi from Toot Yung gallery in Bangkok she suggested an idea that keeps sticking in my mind. A series of portraits of foreign gay sex tourists with their Thai sex worker boyfriends. I always felt a series like that would work better in colour and thought I might shoot it with a blad but digi seems a much better the way to go (digital files and printer prints). I could shoot the series over a series of extended Thai trips.
I would want to do more than just portraits but delve deeply into the relationships, common traits and differences. Their feelings of love, lust, monetary gain, old age, beauty, vanity, exploitation, sexuality also would all be themes.
I would want to be honest with my subjects and truthful to what I find. Getting access like always would be difficult, not sure the workers or the tourists want to be shown on gallery walls, especially if they are in the closet about their homosexuality. I would need to be 100% honest in my approach and see where that gets me, some folks might jump into the idea and contribute to the process. I need to get close to some male workers in Bangkok and Pattaya and see where that leads.
Doot Yung in the past has offered me an artist residency in Bangkok to produce a project but I might be better suited to shooting it in a place like Pattaya where everything nightlife wise is magnified to extremes. I have photographed plenty of things in the sex tourism industry in Thai but this would be an entirely new way of looking at it and telling stories. I am excited by the possibilities of the photographs.
A few years back when I met with Mimi from Toot Yung gallery in Bangkok she suggested an idea that keeps sticking in my mind. A series of portraits of foreign gay sex tourists with their Thai sex worker boyfriends. I always felt a series like that would work better in colour and thought I might shoot it with a blad but digi seems a much better the way to go (digital files and printer prints). I could shoot the series over a series of extended Thai trips.
I would want to do more than just portraits but delve deeply into the relationships, common traits and differences. Their feelings of love, lust, monetary gain, old age, beauty, vanity, exploitation, sexuality also would all be themes.
I would want to be honest with my subjects and truthful to what I find. Getting access like always would be difficult, not sure the workers or the tourists want to be shown on gallery walls, especially if they are in the closet about their homosexuality. I would need to be 100% honest in my approach and see where that gets me, some folks might jump into the idea and contribute to the process. I need to get close to some male workers in Bangkok and Pattaya and see where that leads.
Doot Yung in the past has offered me an artist residency in Bangkok to produce a project but I might be better suited to shooting it in a place like Pattaya where everything nightlife wise is magnified to extremes. I have photographed plenty of things in the sex tourism industry in Thai but this would be an entirely new way of looking at it and telling stories. I am excited by the possibilities of the photographs.
