Photography Thailand Forum

[Marc Schultz]

Since no one has mentioned it yet, there is an exhibition happening right now on the 8th floor (top floor) of Zen department store in the newly renovated Central World Mall. It is an exhibition of images from the recently released book, 9 Days in the Kingdom which was shot by 55 different photographers, a number of them quite well known. Unfortunately I did not note how long the exhibition will be running, but as far as an exhibition goes it is on par with the quality of exhibitions I have seen in New York. Very well executed and presented with a mix of multimedia as well. Definitely a considerable investment was made and is quite impressive as it flows a bit like a maze with various sections and atmospheres. As for the pictures themselves, very few of them really caught my attention to be quite frank and I grazed through them all pretty quickly. Print quality did not seem so high either, but the ones that are quite memorable for me are the ones shot by James Natchaway of the priest who is taking care of dying AIDS patients, I think in Lopburi. Very touching images with such a strong human touch element and a powerful documentary feel, even though it was only about 10 images as I recall. Anyway, an exhibition like this is certainly a big step for Thailand and I would say Asia in general and if you have the time before it ends it is certainly inspiring to see what can be done to present a series of photographs in such a way using a mixture of visual media formats.

[epixx]

Thanks for the reminder. I will most certainly go there.

[bjorn slis]

Went there yesterday, agree on James Nachtwey, great series. From the other photographers just a single photo here and there caught my attention.
I was shocked though by the quality of the prints, mounting etc. It looked like somebody with boxing gloves on mounted them on foamboard that was cut with a chainsaw ! Also there were some prints that were very bad quality JPG's. It seems to be fashion to present your work like this, i see it a lot lately, it spoils the work for me. Very dissapointing if these are "50 of the world's best photographers"

[Marc Schultz]

What gives you the impression that low quality printing is in fashion these days I wonder?

Most of the printed stuff I see either in exhibition or otherwise is normally quite good print quality.

I think this exhibition is more of an exception. Hard to understand though when obviously there was a sizeable budget to create the exhibition itself. Definitely world class in that respect.

[bjorn slis]

I was in Holland and Germany last month and saw quite a few exhibits, including the recently opened Photography museum in Amstedam, and I was really shocked by the quality of the prints.
I saw lots of bitmapped images, bw photographs that were developed wrong so parts became yellow, photographs coming loose from their mounts etc.
I was amazed because when you put so much energy in making great photographs you would want them to look good for a show.
As for the 9 yrs. in the kingdom, they put a lot of energy/money/and time in the exhibition space (worked really well) but imho the photograph is the key thing in the exhibition, and it seemed that they forgot a little about that.

[Chris Savery]

If someone visits this and happens to notice when it ends - please comment here.
I'd like to go but don't want to make the trip and find out it's over.

Well, it's not such a big deal - I've moved back into Bangkok again now. So rather than the bus ride from Phetchaburi at least it's only cross town. Still, don't want to put up with the rampant city noise more than I have to.
Cheers.

[Marc Schultz]

See here Chris: http://www.9days-inthekingdom.com/launch.html

[Marc Schultz]

Bjorn, I agree with what you said. Nearly the most important thing of an exhibition should be the print and display quality. It seems sometimes obviously people have trouble controlling that. Why though they don't work at it until they get the right result is a good question. Especially when there are budgets available to do it right. The only thing I could guess is that the person responsbile for making the prints did not know how to control the output quality. But to me that would indicate the wrong person was assigned to the task. A shame really since it reduces the impact the pictures could have on the viewer and does not show off the photographer's works as best they could. Photographer's always want to put their best foot forward and in case like what you mentioned it does not allow them to do that.

[Chris Savery]

Thanks Marc.
Til Dec. 5th 10am - 10pm Level 8 Zen. Free admission.

[CW Lawrence]

I'd have to agree with Bjorn on print quality issues. I've not been to the 9 Days in the Kingdom exhibition (yet) but have seen a few others in recent years where the print quality was atrocious. I've also noticed this trend in print media; I've seen full spreads from low quality jpegs - you can see the pixels from a meter away. Is this just a laziness stemming from the 'digital CENSORED WORD' or some kind of change in the mass aesthetic perception?

[bjorn slis]

at the risk of sounding like an old man:
I think it has something to do with the digital era, when you work in a darkroom you learn to appreciate good papers and print quality, and after working long hours to get the print right, you are very careful to mount it right and get it framed properly. (I also was surprised because to get a print framed well is so cheap here)

[Chris Savery]

I went to see the exhibit a few days ago. I enjoyed it but I'd have to agree with above observations. Maybe even extend them a bit. I though some photos chosen to show were surprisingly bad too - all things considered from such big names and world reknown photographers I expected better. Many were very good, of course, but I did see a few that I just had to wonder. Why? How? In a few cases not only poor print quality but also out of focus with questionable composition. I'll probably get flamed for saying it but, oh well, opinions is opinions.

As for why the quality is poor is speculation. I think probably there is an attitude that the public just won't notice or care. I saw several people going through it and no one seemed to be paying attention to that. In a case like this where the only money being made (I think) is by selling books it likely just became sufficient to throw them up there without really looking at that issue. Or maybe they ran out of time. Or maybe the person in charge doesn't really know about that kind of thing. And then you have the typical "mai pen rai" attitude here anyway to throw in with that. Somebody was making decisions about it as they chose to highlight James Natchwey very prominently and I think that was a good idea. His images received considerably better care. Not sure about the choice to trick out his images with film border effects. I'm somewhat confident that he is shooting digital now.

I'm curious about the section near the end labeled "Hall of Frames". Looking through the many, many images there (of which many are too high to view) I thought the print quality was better and some of those images would have easily been better chosen in the main gallery. But I'm not sure what that was about as there seemed to be no info about that section.

[mahonyWeb]

100% agree with Chris.

The blacks are so muddy in many of the photos, that it makes you wonder if these were test prints, and that the real prints got lost.

Nachtwey's stuff was head and shoulders above the rest IMHO, but I too thought the borders were naff, his stuff alone resulted in me buying the book but haven't looked at it yet.

[David Salmanowitz]

Here is a link to the pretty much pre-eminent annual photo show in the world, which was held last month with everything from Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Arbus,  all the way to recent stuff by Nachtwey. Incredible stuff to have seen, and the reason I am posting this is after all the problems with the display of 9 Days In The Kingdom it was nice to have seen photos mostly beautifully displayed--needed to be with some of the prices stuff was offered at! Best part is frequent flyer miles got me there from BKK. :-)

http://www.parisphoto.fr/7/introduction.htm?lang=uk

This Steichen was also an incredible exhibition to be able to see.   http://www.jeudepaume.org/?page=article&idArt=419&lieu=7   

[Chris Savery]

That's interesting. You can see some of the exhibited photos by clicking on the exhibitors list and then browsing through the galleries. What always intrigues me is just how many names there are that I've never heard of before. Very humbling.

I'm a speck of dust on a fly on the wall down the alley from a local gallery where I heard them talking about some great photographers. And the fly keeps looking for food not photos.