Bangkok's strange mutant fantasy

THE SIGHT OF Bangkok’s Skytrain commuters riveted to their handheld phones is utterly familiar, and yet Manit Sriwanichpoom of the Kathmandu Gallery on Silom Road has given it a wholly new look in his photo exhibition and accompanying book, “Bangkok in Technicolor”.
“We’re living in a sangkom kom-naa,” he says, a “smartphone addict society”. It’s among the latest social shifts he’s witnessed in the city over the decades, but these days he’s viewing the changes in full colour.
In 1999 the Srinakharinwirot Prasarnmit University graduate rendered Bangkok completely without hues, publishing his first book of photos, “Bangkok in Black and White” to accentuate the contrast between old and new.
Now, “Bangkok in Technicolor” portrays the morphing of Bangkok nearly complete – the result a strange mutation, a new environment garish and alien.
Dozens of the images in the book are on display at the Kathmandu, which Manit owns, with a monstrous purple hybrid angel/Christmas tree looming over all. He’s set up a fantasy landscape of giant billboards. Riveted to the screens in their palms, the people in the pictures surrender themselves and their city to the homogenous consumerist dream of imagined worldly joys.
What Manit seeks to accomplish is a counter-intuitive revelation, turning basic assumptions about colour versus monochrome on their heads. Today the black-and-white photo no longer offers gritty realism but merely nostalgia, especially noir imagery. Meanwhile fantasy has saturated our perceptions and become reality. Larger than life, as if lived on a movie screen, our noir is now in vivid colour.
“The city changes, so I decided to change myself as well,” says the 53-year-old, best known for his remarkable “Pink Man” series assailing Thai consumerism. “I’ve matured, so I no longer see things in just two tones.
“All round Bangkok these days you encounter colourful billboards. I asked myself, ‘Why do I just see the world in black and white? Why don’t I have this colourful atmosphere in my work?’”
Manit explains that his first book showed how the city had changed in the 1960s and ’70s, engulfing its agricultural edges with modern urban sprawl. The changes never stopped.
“Bangkok in the 21st century hasn’t developed in a nice way,” he says. “People today are very individualistic thanks to the technology of communication. It’s quite sad – we tend to communicate virtually instead of in the real world.
“Also, the city should be a nice to live, but in the past few years I’ve felt more uncomfortable and suffocated because of all the high-rise condominiums.”
One picture shows the remnants of a street-food dinner on a table covered with newspaper. The newspaper advertisement has a man carrying a stack of Bt1,000 banknotes. There’s a picture of a pair of trendy young women in vivid outfits, and next to it a shot of a street dog looking at a blind lottery vendor.
Manit has also been training his camera on the multitude of Christmas trees adorning Bangkok stores and malls. “People bring Western elements like Christmas trees to Thailand and we change them completely. To me the trees are like mutants, transplanted in Thai soil and growing into monsters. And yet they call it a Christ tree. It’s very surrealistic!
“Lots of people seem so enjoy this modern culture, but I’m not sure they’re really happy. So this is something I’m trying to bring out in my photos.”
 TIME RUNNING OUT
- “Bangkok in Technicolor” runs until Saturday at the Kathmandu Gallery on Silom Road. The book will remain on sale while stocks last. Find out more at www.KathmanduPhotoBkk.com