Bangkok flashbacks & shots from the edge by OLIVIER PIN-FAT and BEE

""Fifteen years ago Bangkok was a very different city. Apart from the obvious structural differences like fewer high rise buildings, no skytrain or underground there were numerous unseen elements missing like information highways, digital and wireless technologies, even cellular phones weren't on hand to the average Joe. Around the same time that people started to speak of a new space age communication tool that broke down borders and allowed people to share information in milliseconds a wave of subculture swept thru Bangkok like a Tsunami of 'cool' changing everything that was to come afterwards.  That new wave was spearheaded by  people like radio DJ Wasanna Wirachartplee, who turned Thais on to new groups like The Manic Street Preachers, Radiohead, Suede and Oasis.  There were also magazines like Hyper, Caravan and Generation Terrorist that were the first of their kind and became research  tools and style guides for the new generation of turned on Thai youth.
In 1994 Hyper Magazine commissioned Olivier to shoot a series of photographs of an English DJ/musician who at the time was co-hosting a radio show with Wasanna Wirachartplee called 'Radioactive'. What was originally intended to be a three page feature ended up being the cover of the magazine and taking up 12 pages.
Olivier’s 'fashion' photographs of Bee were taken in a burnt out building that was destroyed in the Bangkok riots in 1992. 


The Hyper exhibition will feature 45 photographs from that session along with 4 enormous hallucinatroy 'mind-scapes' from the same period all hand printed  on fiber base bromide paper by Mr Pin-Fat.


Olivier Pin-Fat

Olivier Pin-Fat was born in England in 1969, to a French/Breton mother and Chinese father. He left Great Britain for Asia at the age of 23 to pursue photographic engagements with the ‘unknown’.
His work has been exhibited all over the world from France to China, Japan to Holland.
His work has appeared in leading international publications and is in numerous private collections. From 1998 until 2008, he was a member of ‘Gallery VU’ and ‘Agence VU’ in Paris.
In May 2009, his book "DEAD LIGHT, BONE DRY" was shortlisted for "The European Publishers Award for Photography".
He continues to work and live in Asia.

Bee
Bee grew up in England but is now based in Bangkok.

He spent his teen years making music in the UK & Japan. With his band ‘Getting the Fear’ - and later - ‘Into a Circle’ – he was a prominent figure on the UK post-punk scene of the early 80’s. 'Post punk' doesn't quite define his 'sound' however, and he has relentlessly been musically morphing ever since.
In the early nineties he moved to Asia permanently and settled in Bangkok, involving himself in music and its cultural 'environs.'

Bee was instrumental in the development of the city’s current music scene. He produced and presented his own show on Bangkok’s leading English language radio station 95.5 FMX for 7 years and was a regular contributor to the Nation Newspaper.

Bee was also a founder member of the punked-up-electro band, Futon and now sings with GOO in Bangkok.


The Photographs

Olivier Pin-Fat’s photographs of Bee were taken in 1994 in a burnt out building that was destroyed in the Bangkok riots of 1992.  Originally commissioned to photograph portraits of English DJ/musician 'Bee', Olivier's photographic forays with Bee morphed into a fashion shoot that ran over 12 pages and took the cover of the cutting edge A3 format magazine 'HYPER.' Bee and Olivier spontaneously and jointly created the concept 'on sight' - given a real gun, Bee 'let go' of all inhibitions and run amok within the confines of utter dereliction. The series of stills, oftentimes running cinematically, is from this session. More than simple 'fashion photography', what we end up seeing here is a complete portrait of Bee in 1994. That is to say, frayed, raw, and energized. And through visual implication, a parallel portrait of Bangkok of the early nineties - open, bleeding, ready, contradictory, raw, and on the cusp of enormous change.
The Hyper exhibition will feature 45 photographs all hand printed by Mr Pin-Fat interspersed with pregnant personal representations of the city photographed during the same period.
We are taken on a mental journey through Bee's inner-world, across and through his inner-landscape of that time. The only apparent respite from Bee's mania are 4 dark hallucinatory visions of the city around - these like open windows onto 'the outside world' are in essence blind but resonant searches through the night, the soul of the city - to find some sense of redemption, where ultimately there is none. 


LAUNCH PARTY : FRIDAY August 14th  2009 7PM

Exhibition runs : August 14th  2009 - October 18th

Whitespace Gallery. Room No.260, 2nd-4th Fl, Lido Bldg. lock#16, Siam Square Soi 3, Rama 1 Rd., Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330 Thailand"