Without an H

Photography from south-east Asia by Jon Sanwell

Posts tagged ‘street’

Jakarta | Five portraits

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What to say about Jakarta? It’s a vast, sprawling, congested mess of a place. A megacity of more than 30 million people with no obvious centre, it’s more than a little overwhelming for the first time visitor. It’s a difficult city to love, especially at first sight, but in between the multi-lane highways and behind the concrete blocks, there are pockets of humanity, regular neighbourhoods where regular people go about their everyday lives. There were moments when I felt like I was in my element – there’s nothing like wandering around a new place with a camera and a 35mm lens. But in between these moments were long periods spent sitting in traffic, or simply looking for a place to cross those multi-lane highways.

I think you’d need a lot of time and patience to really get to know this city. I just spent a couple of days there at the start of a month long trip through Java and Bali. In that short time, I barely scratched the surface of Jakarta. I can’t offer a comprehensive overview of the city with my photographs, but I can share a few portraits, some small fragments of Jakartan life. It’s my way of trying to show the city’s human face.

More from Jakarta, and elsewhere in Indonesia, coming soon.

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Flying the flag in Ha Giang City

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I’ve just come back from a week and a bit in the extraordinary Ha Giang province in the far north of Vietnam. This visit, my second, coincided with a holiday weekend, as Vietnam celebrated both Liberation Day (marking the anniversary of the liberation / fall of Saigon in 1975) and International Labour Day, meaning that streets and houses throughout the region were bedecked with flags. The picture above was taken in the late afternoon one day last week in Ha Giang City. These kids of course couldn’t care less about a war that was over before even their parents were born, and were just happy to be out on their bikes with their friends while the sun was shining. At this point, I could draw some clumsy parallel between Liberation Day and my own circumstances, since I am currently taking some long-term leave from my teaching job in Hanoi. There’s certainly nothing quite like riding a motorbike through the mountain roads of northern Vietnam to make a person feel free. I’m planning to go on more travels and take more photographs over the next couple of months. More pictures from Ha Giang province soon (or soon-ish – it will take me a while to go through all the pictures I took on this trip, but it’s a task I’m looking forward to).

Also while I was away, one of my recent posts from Bangkok was featured on WordPress’s Discover page. It’s always nice when my pictures get some extra attention, so thank you to the good people of WordPress, and welcome to those of you who are new to the blog.

April wanderings

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Sometimes when I take pictures, I have a particular project in mind, maybe a specific location or neighbourhood or a particular style of photograph. Other times, I just wander about randomly and take pictures of what or who I see. Recently, I’ve been doing the latter. I don’t think either approach is better or worse than the other; they’re both just a reflection of how I’m feeling at the time, how focused – or not – my mind is. So these are some pictures I’ve taken on the streets in Hanoi over the last month; no overall theme or story here, though I think some of them fit together quite nicely in twos or threes.

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Bangkok miscellany

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A collection of portraits, street scenes and details from my visit to Bangkok at the start of the year.

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Lunar new year decorations

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Wat Arun, my favourite temple in Bangkok

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Beware of falling elephants

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Chinatown

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Thailand is in a one year period of mourning for King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died last year

Metal and charms in Bangkok

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Back in January of this year, I spent a few days in Bangkok. It was the Tet holiday, or lunar new year, here in Vietnam, which is always a good time to leave Hanoi in search of warmer weather. In Bangkok, I met up with my dad, who was visiting from the UK for a few days, having just been on holiday in Myanmar. We spent an agreeable few days being tourists, visiting the obligatory temples and treating ourselves to Thai cuisine. After Dad went back home, I had a few more days to wander around by myself.

One of my favourite parts of Bangkok is its Chinatown, the network of streets around Thanon Yaowaraat, where these pictures were taken. At the south-east end of Thanon Yaowarat, near Wat Traimit, there are a few streets of hardware stores, selling metal pipes, rods, tubes, girders and sprockets (probably). I always enjoy taking pictures in streets like this; I like the patterns. Not far away, there’s a streetside amulet market, where you can buy lucky charms and talismans. I think that these traders have been relocated from their old market near the Grand Palace.

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amulet-market-portraits

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Hanoi / Yangon

Earlier this year, I had my first photography exhibition at the Vietnam in Focus cafe / gallery in Hanoi. Mirror Cities: Hanoi / Yangon was a collection of street portraits from the two cities. The pictures were shown in pairs, Hanoi in black and white, Yangon in colour, with each pair having something in common in terms of subject, style or theme.

The exhibition got a little attention in the Vietnamese media – I had my fifteen minutes of fame (or five and a half minutes of indifference) on VTV4 – but the main benefit for me personally was seeing a collection of my photographs as large prints. I don’t print my pictures nearly enough, and this is something that I’ve resolved to do more in the future.