RAMAYANA TATTOOS

Eric Beecroft, the co-founder of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshops, has just announced that it was ready to accept early registrations ($100 deposit, non refundable, and deducted from the total tuition amount) until January 15, 2012. Early registration guarantees a spot and precedence in the choice of instructor.

The 2012 Foundry Photojournalism Workshop will be held in North Thailand from July 29- August 4, 2012.

For regional students (South Asia-- India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tibet and South East Asia-Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Phillippines, Laos, Cambodia,Indonesia, Malaysia) the tuition is $475. For all others it is $975 US dollars. Payment is via Paypal.

So spread the word via social network sites, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

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Labels: Photo Events, Photojournalism, Thailand

Photo © Xavier Comas- Courtesy TIME Lightbox

LightBox, TIME’s photo department's blog, is really one of my top photo destinations almost every day, and one of its recent features is incredibly compelling.

The feature is titled The Rumoh Raja, and is by Spanish photographer Xavier Comas, who shows us photographs made in Thailand’s southern region. The people of the region are mostly ethnic Malay and Muslim, and are descendants of people who had lived once in an independent sultanate.

"Somehow, the house possesses its inhabitants, who merge into the darkness of its shadows."

Xavier spent three months living with an ethnic Malay Muslim family in the decrepit shell of a once splendid palace at the invitation of a local imam's helper and a shaman-healer. The Rumoh Raja (ie the “Raja’s house”) used to be occupied by Tengku Samsuddin, a turn of the century aristocrat who governed the semi-autonomous Malay state of Legeh until it and other territories were swallowed up by the kings of Siam in 1909.

The current inhabitant claims the upper floors of the palace are still haunted by he spirits of two women in red, court concubines who still dance in mourning for their fallen Raja.

Dark and brooding as befits the subject matter, this feature is will leave you wondering whether the building hosts ghosts or not.

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Labels: Photographers: Photojournalists, Thailand

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.

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Labels: India, Photographers: Travel, Thailand

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.

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Labels: China, Interviews, Photographers: Photojournalists, Thailand