Bangkok photos of old districts and architecture pay homage to ways of life fast disappearing
- In his photobook, Vanishing Bangkok, British photographer Ben Davies documents a side of the Thai capital that many don’t get to see
- He says the state-sponsored process of gentrification is erasing much of Bangkok’s ambience and historical memory
Predawn darkness still shrouds the slumbering streets of Bangkok, but Ben Davies is already out and about. The British photographer is up early, running around an old neighbourhood near the city’s Chinatown.
He has come to the Thai capital’s historic Samphanthawong district to step back in time – if only temporarily.
“You come in darkness and in a place like this you still get a sense of old Bangkok,” Davies says. “I love this area. I photographed a lot around here.”
He stops by a sacred banyan tree that rises from a cracked pavement. Its gnarled trunk is girded with colourful votive ribbons. “You can sit here and watch monks filing past on their morning rounds,” he says.
As if on cue, at sunrise saffron-robed monks from a nearby Buddhist monastery appear with alms bowls in hand. “If you come back at 8am, the monks are gone, the traffic is already bad, and the old-town feeling has disappeared,” Davies says.
Dressed in cargo pants and a polo shirt with a knapsack on his back and a pair of sunglasses resting atop his head, Davies, 59, could be taken for a foreign tourist.
