Jay Vatanakuljaras

Jay is a master of both sound and visuals. An audio/visual designer and artist, he is one of the founding members of the post-rock band JPBS, whom I had the chance to photograph before this encounter. I first discovered their music at DIAGE Festival and was immediately drawn into it. Jay later launched a solo project under the name Jay V., blending personal storytelling with visuals created in collaboration with DuckUnit. In 2025, he performed this work at DIAGE and again at the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, building music narratives from his family history.

For our portrait session, Jay invited me to his family home on the other side of the river, a spacious house originally bought by his grandfather and now shared with his parents and siblings. I was struck by how minimal the space was. Jay explained that his mother dislikes clutter and avoids hoarding, something I felt was relatively uncommon in Southeast Asia.

As we chatted during the session, Jay recounted the early days of JPBS, which he started with a university friend in 2012. He spoke about the challenges of balancing the band’s growing success with the reality of six members juggling full-time jobs, making touring especially difficult.

While giving me a tour of the house, Jay pointed out an unusual structure embedded in the ceiling, a kind of grid system he described as a “CCTV ancestor”. He believes it was once used to discreetly monitor the ground floor from upstairs. That same grid pattern later inspired the visuals for his solo work and appeared on the album cover. I knew immediately it had to be part of the portrait series.