Yoonki Kim is a Korean currently living in Bangkok now. He recently sent me a link to a series of images, 70 Rai, made in Bangkok’s Klongtoey slum. The initial images were endearing; the smiles of the sitters radiant despite their surroundings. I was touched when I saw how happy they looked. Perhaps I miss the time I spent in Thailand two years ago, where the people were simple and welcoming.
[all images © Yoonki Kim]
Barthes wrote about how people transformed themselves for a moment before their picture is taken, to create a posed image of them, to be remembered by camera. These images of happy smiling people then puzzled me, were they merely posing for the photographer or was the photographer choosing a particular moment to capture? I laughed out loud when I saw the image of the group of children and the fat man. In the image, I saw so much more, a kind of happiness for the present and the future, a slice of their life taken at a particular moment. I wish that I could be one of the children, smiling for eternity.
However, I was robbed of these feelings when the series drew to a close. Several dark images at the end jolted me out of my reverie. I was angry, disturbed and wondered why Yoonki chose to include these images into the series, and to end it…it all seemed wrong. I don’t know what his intention was but I hazard a guess that he wanted to show the other side of the slums, beyond the smiles that he had presented to the viewer. However, I wished that it wasn’t done in this manner, it appears to be almost cruel.
When selecting the images to post, I deliberately chose the smiling ones. Maybe I’m being slightly disrespectful for not presenting a good overview of the series. Somehow, I wanted to present the brief moments of happiness that coursed through me when I first saw the images.
Tell me how you feel after seeing the entire series here.
p.s. Almost done with the projects in school but I would still be busy in the coming week, I have a few jobs to clear before the exams start. However, I should be posting more regularly from now on. Continue sending me links!
I think you have to look at it in context (Klong Toey are the slums of Bangkok, the only place that is deemed unsafe to wander in, as a foreigner), not as individual portraits. So that even the smiling shot with the fat man has its part of drama. We are meant to go beyond, behind the smiles, and see that drama. In that shot, the obesity of the man, which may very well spell unemployed, diabetic, or the likes. It’s a journey in the heart of Thailand, warts and all, including good spiritedness that every thai, even slummed, can impart on the visitor.
IMO.
I agree about with your point about the last images, their inclusion seems a bit heavy-handed. If these darker pictures are presented by the artist as a counterpoint to the earlier, ’smily’ pictures, I think that the distinction between them is too great and in the process risks devaluing any message either has. However it could also be argued that this is a means to illicit a reaction in the viewer that the artist feels the context (the slums, the state of life in them) demands? If I wanted to get political about it, I think pictures like these force us to confront questions about what do we want from art and what do we think (our) art should be doing?
I think the photographer is asking us to step away from these smiles - it’s a bit patronizing and simplistic to think that people living in slums are always happy and always cheerful. Certainly, they do keep positive spirits, as demonstrated by these photos, but life is far from easy in the slums, and I think that’s what those “extra” pictures are meant to describe.
By the way - hello! I love your blog, and I’ve just added it to my blogrolls.
If it was just smiles, then Yoonki might as well be a slightly adventurous tourist, no? I think what he is doing is showing us his journey thru the slums, and maybe the problem is juxtaposition of things he may have seen on different days, and with different moods. I undrestand it is not so easy to go from smiling at kids, then shuddering at the sight of drug abuse. Was the idea fro Yooki to show us what a smiling kid could become, when you give him an extra 5 or 6 years in the slums? (and for a girl, maybe a brothel bed). We cannot just stop at a picture and a simple reaction, he asks us to encompass a whole reality, or rather a whole truth at slum life. IMO.
Really nice shots, genttle and full of poetry.
I believe that every photographer has to take position and you can see slums from different angles of view.
herve, I agree with your thought that perhaps Yoonki wanted us to think what could happen to the smiling kid in a few years’ time. This fabricated reality of happiness, is after all, fabricated. However, I still think that he was too heavy handed in including those last images, as Edward mentioned. And showing images from the same scene just seemed like a shortcut to show us the other reality.
An Xiao: Hi! Thanks for your support!