It is 3:54 in the morning. I can not sleep. Yesterday I received an email from JJ Naudet the founder of The Eye of Photography: “Bangkok, your images, your text? “. He keeps at it. He was the only one to published me in August 1980 in Photo, on my return from Thailand. Nearly forty years ago now. I had fled Paris. Freelance at the Figaro Magazine, the weekly founded by Robert Hersant to support Giscard in his crusade against socialism, François Lochon then the new Gamma boss had approached me in the corridors of the newspaper: “Join us, you’ll see, you’ll live adventure … ” I had believed him. The Vietnamese had invaded Cambodia and chased the Khmer Rouge who exterminated their opponents. A few days after my arrival in the refugee camps on the Thai border, the Russians invaded Afghanistan … The news had shifted. I was going to stay in Bangkok for six months. A Chinese spy had warned me: “You will stay in Bangkok, the burning sheath of Asia”.
Marine rear base during the Vietnam War Thailand had become a brothel and cheap dope store for GI’s coming back from the front. In 1980 the former Marines were the managers of Patpong bars, the Pigalle of the city. The new customers were mostly Australians and Germans who came to enjoy the cheap meat.
I tried to do this book for many years. It frightened publishers. Too social, not enough voyeur, indefinite customers to seduce , for whom the problems of “the other” do not count. It took the will of an enthusiastic artistic director, Loïc Vincent, and the will of a young enterprising publisher, Bertrand Brillois, to finally publish, this testimony of the decline of the West whose fault, sexual slavery, is to be charged both ” to the dominant white male” and the corruption and cynicism of the indigenous powers.
It’s 4:21am now. It’s time to go back to bed
YM.
“BKK” – Photographs and text by Yan Morvan
NOEVE editions
Format: 200 x 265 mm
Number of pages: 176 pages
Number of photographs: 110 photos
Price: 44 € TTC (Standard Edition), 195 € (Collector’s Edition A & B)
Languages: French & English
Release Date: November 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-2-490676-11-8 (Standard Edition)
978-2-490676-12-5 (Collector’s Edition A) & 978-2-490676-13-2 (Collector’s Edition B)
