French-Thai Photo Exhibitions

This month Bangkok hosts several photo exhibitions presenting famous French and Thai photographers works. I've visited a few of the exhibitions and made some notes;

Fashion Story - Secrets of French Fashion presents works from some of France's most famous fashion photographers such as Jean Marie Perier, Gerald Uferas and Francoise Huguier. The photographs cover all aspects of the fashion world with some really fine portraits of people like Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior and the now infamous John Galliano. I imagine that if the same exhibition goes to London, Paris or New York the photos of John Galliano may be removed after his recent drunken anti-semitic outburst that ended up with him being arrested and fired from his job as head designer for Christian Dior.

Some of the most interesting photos in the exhibition for me were actually taken by British photographer Derek Hudson. He has captured some of the fascinating back stage drama. He captures the rush and drama involved before all the glamour of the 'cat walk'.

Next on my list was the exhibition titled "Portraits of Asia" by French photographer Eric Lafforgue. More than 50 prints enlarged to approximately 1.5m x 1.0m. I love large size prints as they really add some drama to the image, but only if the quality of the image is high enough to pass the magnified scrutiny. In Lafforgue's case every image passed with flying colours. It was clear to me that his photographs were not simply quick shots of people he happened to come across during his trips through Asia, but carefully posed shots using high end equipment such as his Hasselblad H4D-50 and Leica M6.

This exhibition was outside and in the bright sunlight, but his photos still managed to pop out with all their colour and drama.

The next exhibition I visited was in a small photo gallery called Kathmandu Photo Gallery that I often visit. This exhibition was of the late SH Lim's work. Here is the gallery's description;

"An encounter with S. H. Lim (Vivat Pitayaviriyakul) and his fashion and glamour photography is akin to a trip in a Time Machine. Back to the glory days and uncomplicated appeal of Thai cinema and beauty contests post-1957. His photographic prints have become the memory of that age, appearing as magazine covers, calendars and movie posters; all of them vivacious, beautiful, elegant, cool and dynamically sexy: Thailand’s first Miss Universe, Apasara Hongsakul, stepping out of an aeroplane fresh from her triumph in Miami, an angelic visitation to earthlings; Priya Rungruang, eternal sex siren, in a ‘two-piece’; Apuntree Prayuthsenee, Miss Thailand 1967, in Thai traditional dress. Or bikini-clad free-spirited star Orasa Israngkura na Ayathaya, exuberantly leaping in the air over coconut fronds. These are iconic images, but their photographer remains unknown to most of us.

S. H. Lim, a Thai photographer of Chinese blood, was born in 1930. A self-taught lensman, he took pictures for many well-known Thai publications such as Sakul Thai, Bangkok Weekly, Ploenjit, Or Sor Tor and Seansuk, from 1962 until his retirement after 1987. In 1963 he was awarded the silver and bronze medals by the New York Kodak Expo Photography Contest.

Kathmandu Photo Gallery is proud to present the work of S. H. Lim (Vivat Pityaviriyakul), as the first of our ‘Seeking Forgotten Thai Photographers’ project to highlight master photographers hitherto neglected by official Thai photographic history."

(copied from http://www.kathmandu-bkk.com/exhibition_present01.html )

One of the most interesting photos in this exhibition was of a girl sitting on a beach with her back to the camera. In the foreground is a stick in the sand with the model's bra draped over the stick. This is quite an old photo and for such a conservative country this would have been a very daring photo to make and display in public. It still looks very enticing even today.