How rare for a photograph to bestow a sense of “the God’s perspective”: the downward divine gaze upon the heaving mass of humanity below, as long-suffering man endures his vale of tears. Not that novice photographer Thamarong Wanarithikul is placing himself above all men; it just so happened that on the way to work one day along the pedestrian overpass, his idly pointing camera lens ranging over the road below came across some workmen in the back of a pick-up truck.
Inspired by the image, Thamarong went out to photograph the truck every morning after that throughout the past year of 2017, resulting in these beautiful photographs that at first glance appear to be Social Realist paintings, full of detail in sharp focus: the clothes, the faces, the attitudes, the props of life like water flasks and food baskets, alongside work equipment and supplies—paint cans, concrete mixing pail, tool box and crash helmets. Divided into sets of images, they arrest the eye and excite our imaginative curiosity.
Thamarong Wanarithikul: “I didn’t think much about these people at first—I didn’t even realize it was the same truck there every morning. Then I saw the daily repetition of images and some of the props that never change. It struck me how all working people’s lives, whether indoors or outdoors, whether you ride trains, a car or a truck, everyone shares the same ‘mouth and stomach’ concerns. The blue basket that never changes even as different workmen surround it, represents the poor man’s constant anxiety whether he has made enough to sustain his life.”
Curator Manit Sriwanichpoom: “With ‘8 a.m.’ as this series’ condition, Thamarong’s work immediately acquires its extraordinary aura; some sets of images took 30 days to photograph. It’s unbelievable that the photographer managed to capture the same truck almost every morning. Some days, the men who are normally there are missing, possibly on sick leave or fired from their jobs—it sets us conjecturing endlessly.”
Thamarong Wanarithikul (b 1975) graduated with a master in IT from Queen Mary’s College, University of London. ‘8 a.m.’ is his first solo exhibition.
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