Bangkok Book Project — or the M6 and D-Lux-3 vs the Rest

[malland]

Well, the title is a joke, but you may be interested in seeing the latest version of my book project, to which I have just added some 100 pictures. Although I started the project a couple of years ago shooting with the Leica M6, at this stage only some forty M6 pictures remain, the bulk of the 302 pictures having been taken with the Ricoh GRD, GX100 and GRD2 cameras, with a some shot with the D-Lux 3 as well. Please let me know your reactions and your thoughts.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/1026877...71568487/show/

I've also added the following explanatory text:

This latest version contains some 100 additional pictures and chapter titles that I've added to help clarify the structure, with now so many pictures, While the latter must stand on their own, in conceiving the project I was thinking about the way a painting or a photograph can be "read" in the same way as a poem in understood, and wanted to see how one could conceive a book that was structured the way a longer poem might be crafted: that is what is behind the structure of the chapters, which begin and end with the same type of photographs and act in the way rhyme or rhythm or repetition of sounds or imagery might work in a poem.

The chapter names include, "Souvannaphoum/Golden Land", referring to the ancient Sanskrit/Pali name for this part of Southest Asia, and "Emporium/Paragons", referring to the names of the two large upscale Bangkok shopping centres, "The Emporium" and "Siam Paragon". As for "Mahavithayalai/Univerisiy", Bangkok has a huge number of students — there are 600,000 just at Ramkanghaeng, an open university — who are very visible everywhere because of the black and white uniforms that they are required to wear.

—Mitch/Chiang Mai
Flickr: Mitch Alland's Photostream

[Bo_Lorentzen]

Mitch,

Looking forward to checking the images out.... but something is not working with your link.

[malland]

Bo, thanks — I don't know what went wrong: here's the correct link:

Bangkok Hysteria©: Book Project

—Mitch/Chiang Mai
Flickr: Mitch Alland's Photostream

[desire]

Hi Mitch,

Fantastic pictures. I like the gritty BW look.

[samwells]

Mitch: Just spent an enjoyable time looking at this rather than working...lovely shots, the close-upness (if there is such a word) and depth of blacks remind me of William Klein (I always think it's a tad condescending to make comparisons like that, but it's a convenient shorthand). The structure works well for me, too - some of the sequences appear very cinematic. Be interesting to see how it would work as an actual (paper-based) book...I suspect, fr'instance, that images would only appear on the right-hand page of a double-page spread? Great stuff, anyway...
cheers:
Sam

[malland]

Sam, thanks for the kind words and for taking time to look at this.

To the degree that I would have a choice, my models for a book would be two recent books by Moriyama Daido, "Buenos Aires" and "Hawaii", which are not easily available outside of Japan, although I saw "Hawaii" being sold at Beaubourg in Paris. I bought my from Amazon Japan, These books have some 300-400 photographs, printed flush, in, roughly A4 size, But these types of books seem only to be published in Japan, where I might look for a publisher, having lived in Tokyo and speaking rudimentary Japanese. But, now, a friend is trying to line me up with a French publisher, although I don't know whether this will come to anything. In any case, in Japane there is more interest in Thailand than in the West; more interest in photography books as well. The Moriyama books are published on both sides of the paper. Incidentally, Moriyama was originally inspired by William Klein.

—Mitch/Chiang Mai
Flickr: Mitch Alland's Photostream

[samwells]

Mitch - Interesting...must admit, I don't know Moriyama...must look that up (thanx for the introduction!). Do let us know how you get on with publishing.
cheers:
Sam

[elgenper]

Excellent, Mitch! A personal visual language, consequently used to give the flavour of a bustling city.

When watching the slide show, it struck me what an efficient medium this is to show this kind of material. the images just flow, remaining just long enough to read them and get the mood. No stopping to peruse the details, just get ready for a new image. Just as in real life...

Recalling that you had talked of using two kinds of cameras (large and small sensor) for this, I thought of trying to see the difference - and once I was under way, I just plain forgot! Just as it should be, really...

[nhabedi]

I just returned from a week in Tokyo and I was surprised to see that there's a market for a certain type of photo books that seems to be exclusive to Japan (while the photo books you can find in the US or in most European countries are pretty much the same everywhere).

I knew Daido Moriyama, but I found several books from him I hadn't seen before and I also found beautiful books by other Japanese photographers I hadn't heard about before. Plus, I brought home with me a DVD showing Moriyama working on his Brazilian project. I don't speak Japanese, but it's always fun to watch photographers while they're working.

Interestingly, Moriyama uses (analog) Ricoh point-and-shoot cameras exclusively in this video, no SLRs, no Leica rangefinders, no other "sophisticated" equipment. There'll be an exhibition in Tokyo in January showing recent digital works from him, but they didn't say what type of camera he's using now.

And, Mitch, those are nice photos!

[elgenper]

Esprit d´éscalier... and my editing period is up...

Mitch, when reading my post "after the fact", it dawns on me that it might be seen as an argument against your plans to make a book out of the material. This was in no way my intention; nothing can replace a well printed book for more or less permanently making material widely and easily accessible. Only, I had seldom before found as much value in the web slide show technique as a quick, but also absorbing, way of presentation.

[malland]

Per, yes, I understood what you meant — and agree with you on both counts.

—Mitch/Chiang Mai
Flickr: Mitch Alland's Photostream

[malland]

The discussion here never took off, but in the following thread it did and some interesting issues — and also some weird ones — were discussed, including the difference in "documenting" and "depicting", in the following thread where I cross-posted this, which might be of interest to some of you.

—Mitch/Bangkok
Flickr: Mitch Alland's Photostream

[malland]

Sorry, I forgot to include the link:

Bangkok Book Project [Page 1]: Ricoh Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

—Mitch/Bangkok
Flickr: Mitch Alland's Photostream[/quote]

[malland]

I have now edited the Bangkok Hysteria© book project by cutting out 102 photographs, so that the total number of pages is 240 instead of the earlier 342 pages. You can see the new version, which I have called Bangkok Noir©, at the following link:

Bangkok Noir©: Book Project - a set on Flickr

The best way to look at the pictures on the flickr site is to click on "Slideshow" at the top right of the page, but looking at this many picture in a flickr slide show can be mind-numbing. Therefore, if you are interested you can contact me by personal mail and I'll send you instructions for downloading an 62MB zip file with all the JPGs.

On the title, I'm still not sure about the Bangkok Noir© vs [ithe Bangkok Hysteria©[/i] title, which I suppose it depends whether there is enough hysteria in the series to warrant the latter title. (But please note that in the new flickr set I have not yet changed the title page, just to avoid having to upload something to flickr that is not a photograph.)

—Mitch/Potomac, MD
Flickr: Mitch Alland's Photostream

[malland]

I've just completed another edit of the Bangkok Hysteria© book project by reducing it by 76 pictures, from 240 slides (including the text pages) to 164 slides. The slide show can be seen by clicking here.

When I was editing I found that once I had a deleted a picture I didn't miss it at all, but in most cases the decision to delete was difficult. The most to difficult to delete were older pictures, or ones that represented a new approach for me when they were made, as if the concept of these pictures made me think that they should stay rather than their actual quality.

—Mitch/Bangkok
Wild Beasts of Botswana

[earleygallery]

Really enjoyed the slide show, the images hang very well together. There were a few which I would probably edit out as they seemed to interrupt the flow but that's just my opinion of course. I'd also go with the 'Noir' title.

[malland]

James:

Thanks for the kind words. I'd be interested in knowing which ones you think should be cut.

On the title, I was talking to a French publisher and the "Bangkok Noir" title just doesn't work well in French because it has too much of a "Film Noir" connotation.

—Mitch/Bangkok
Bangkok Hysteria©: Book Project

[wls.shanghai]

...superb series from Krung Thep - TOP

Well done !!!


wls

[earleygallery]

Mitch, I will look again and PM you.

What is the significance of the fish shots at the start of each chapter?

[malland]

James:

Thanks for taking the trouble to look again.

On the fish, I'm very reluctant to answer this question directly because the fish are a metaphor and depend on visual impact for meaning: reducing the meaning to words, inevitably, impoverishes it. Ralph Gibson says in an interview that when people ask him rto explain what he meant by a picture or a sequence or by a book he tells them that it's all said in the pictures themselves, if he wanted to make the statement verbally he would have written an essay or a poem instead of making the pictures.

But coming back to the metaphor of the fish, you'll note that the fist one comes after the title of the first chapter, "Souvannaphoum/Golden Land", which is the ancient Sanskrit name for this part of Southeast Asia, a rich part of the world centuries ago: when Louis XIV sent an embassy to Siam, the ambassadors were dazzled by how much richer the people were than in France; the land was rich agriculturally and population was low. There is a famous 13th century stele from Sukhotai, an early Thai kingdom, which states, "In the fields there is rice, in the water there is fish". Some As late as 1911 the population of Siam was 11 million; that of Thailand today is 65 million.

So, the first picture, following the "Souvannaphoum/Golden Land" chapter, is clearly ironic both in its subject matter and graphically. The metaphor continues in the other three pictures in which the fish are increasingly "organised": for example, in the last one they're laid out carefully in little baskets. The is in the Mahanagar/Metrolpolis chapter, which represents an increasing acculturation of village people who have migrated to the great city. The first time I visited Thailand years ago I was struck by how neat and clean and organised Thai villages were, while Bangkok was chaotic, dirty and tumultuous. These Bangkok is much more organised and the central part is quire clean. Hence, the more organised fish.

Underlying all this, is how I embarked on this project: I always felt that the meaning of a photograph is revealed through its form as well as content, the same way as that of a poem and started to think whether a book of photographs could be organised in a manner similar to a long poem. This is the reason I started each chapter with a fish and ended with a nude: for the rhythm in the sequence, similar in concept to a rhyme.

—Mitch/Bangkok