Black Day
January 14, 2021
In the era that democracy is one of the most talked-about issues for the whole world, Thailand is one of the last countries in the world that most of the people still have so much love for the king. The king is the soul of the nation.
Black Day is my personal project documenting the sadness surrounded the country during a year long mourning after King Bhumibol Adulyadej pass away. I was very intrigued by the melancholy I felt as a Thai toward the death.
It was the same feeling that made all the Thai people came to the Grand Palace for praying respect to the king for the last time. We all were driven by the sadness. Instead of journalistic approach I usually do, I decided to use myself as an evident of how Thai people feel to present the country’s historical mourning in the poetic photo series.
Black Day is my personal project documenting the sadness surrounded the country during a year long mourning after King Bhumibol Adulyadej pass away. I was very intrigued by the melancholy I felt as a Thai toward the death.
It was the same feeling that made all the Thai people came to the Grand Palace for praying respect to the king for the last time. We all were driven by the sadness. Instead of journalistic approach I usually do, I decided to use myself as an evident of how Thai people feel to present the country’s historical mourning in the poetic photo series.
Ekkarat Punyatara, a National Geographic Thailand’s staff photographer based in Bangkok. His photography is inspired by fascination in Thai culture that he was rooted since childhood by his conservative family. He got scholarships from Foundry Workshop(2012) and Angkor Photo Workshop(2013). His first solo exhibition, It’s Personal, got buzzed in Thailand and international from questioning the traditional conservative way of seeing Buddhism in Thailand by documenting a group of Thai monks living in New York. Beside worldwide assignments as an outsider, Ekkarat pursues to portrait the lives of his beloved country as the sight of the insider.
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