Buddhadasa Bhiku was a revolutionary, an ascetic monk (reinterpreting the Buddhist doctrine, inspiring Thai and foreigners social and cultural activities, he founded an important community and center for study in the Surat Thani forest), but he was also a revolutionary visual artist and photographer . His proto-conceptual self-portraits are not an aware expression of art in itself, but they have been used as medium for spreading his ideas and thoughts concerning the religion and the concept of “ego”.
This exhibition shows – for the first time – Buddhadasa Bhiku’s images and poems in their original form and it is a new chapter of the great history of Thailand’s forgotten photography masters directed by artist and gallerist Manit Sriwanichpoom.
The Buddhadasa Indapanno Archives collected more than 400 plates with words and photographies that the monk and his assistant Phra Maha Boonchu realized for his photo albums, now a series of three books with all the works are available. The original books should be shown to the public next year during the announced photography festival in Bangkok.
In 1972, Buddhadasa Bhiku had already attained the age of 66 and the stature of a famous enlightened monk; he struggled to reject all attempts to turn his portraits into icons of superstitious worship, which at that time (as now) was all the craze. He wanted people to realise the essence of Buddhism; not to cling to the egoism of ‘I’ and ‘Mine’. When he finally saw that his fight against the holy picture craze was futile, Buddhadasa embarked on a series of self-portraits, using the surroundings of Suan Mokh Monastery (Surajthani) as location, with all its scattered symbolic props: a statue of Bodhisattava Sri Vijaya, lotus flowers, mounds of dirt, rocks, even monastery pets. At times he’s posing alone, employing tricks in the monastery darkroom to compose double and triple prints to create a dharma riddle, inviting the viewer to interpret with wisdom. Each picture was accompanied by a dharma-teaching poem that he’d written for it. The series is entitled ‘Dharma Text Next to Image’.
These 423 Buddhist poems and photographs clearly reveal Than Buddhadasa’s understanding of art and technology, particularly the potential power of photography to serve as a medium for spreading dharma—a visionary idea far ahead of his time, when the Thai art world still had no inkling of such terms as ‘Conceptual Art’ and ‘Conceptual Photography’.
Kathmandu Photo Gallery, with the kind cooperation of Buddhadasa Indapanno Archives, is honoured to present the photography of Buddhadasa Bhiku (1906 – 1993): thirty images printed and enlarged from the original artwork for ‘Dharma Text Next to Image’, to celebrate a photographic master, as the sixth edition of our ‘Seeking Forgotten Thai Photographers’ project to search for master artists otherwise neglected by the Thai photographic history.
Eliseo Barbàra
MoST Artists
Buddhadasa Bhiku
A mini-retrospective of Thailand’s forgotten photography master
May 4 – June 30, 2013
Kathmandu Photo Gallery
87 Pan Road, Silom
Bangkok
Thailand
The others Thailand’s forgotten photography masters:
S. H. Lim
Rong Wong-savun
Liang Ewe
Pornsak Sakdaenprai
