Peerapon Boonthep

When I came to Phayao to see my installation for the Phayao Photography Biennale, I also took the opportunity to photograph some of the artists involved in the festival. This was where I met Peerapon Boonthep, who was also part of the Biennale team.

Born and raised in rural Nan, Peerapon is a photographer and mixed-media artist whose work often revolves around labour, rural life, economic hardship and politics. His relationship with these subjects is quite personal. He has worked in construction himself, and has spent time working alongside farmers and labourers while photographing their everyday lives.

For one project, he travelled through northeast Thailand, photographing communities and landscapes along the Mekong River. Later, for his project SAME OLD, he returned to his hometown in Nan during the harvest season and worked alongside local farmers, photographing them as they worked. He then spent several months working with construction workers, listening to their stories about money, family, hardship and the hopes they carried with them. The photographs were eventually exhibited together with tools and materials connected to their work, bringing fragments of those working environments into the gallery.

The Biennale headquarters was at Artcade Phayao, an art space sitting right in the middle of a local market. When I met Peerapon there, he was simply hanging around on the exhibition floor. We didn't plan anything elaborate. I photographed him there, among the artcade space, the walls, the bathroom.

Looking back, I like that the portrait happened this way. Someone whose own work is so concerned with ordinary working lives was photographed in a place where art and everyday life were already mixed together.