Warriors
These warriors aren’t ancient, neither they do war.
Yes, they might have the strength from their past but they stare deeply into each other eyes. Kids that are being put to test and taught how to fight for their lives.
These moments were captured in Bangkok, in January 2016, at the Lumpinee stadium where every week young fighters confront each other on the ring, with the enthusiastic support of their families, team and a crowd of avid for gamblers. The screams don't bother them, they have much more than money at stake.
Warriors
These warriors aren’t ancient, neither they do war.
Yes, they might have the strength from their past but they stare deeply into each other eyes. Kids that are being put to test and taught how to fight for their lives.
These moments were captured in Bangkok, in January 2016, at the Lumpinee stadium where every week young fighters confront each other on the ring, with the enthusiastic support of their families, team and a crowd of avid for gamblers. The screams don't bother them, they have much more than money at stake.
Warriors
These warriors aren’t ancient, neither they do war.
Yes, they might have the strength from their past but they stare deeply into each other eyes. Kids that are being put to test and taught how to fight for their lives.
These moments were captured in Bangkok, in January 2016, at the Lumpinee stadium where every week young fighters confront each other on the ring, with the enthusiastic support of their families, team and a crowd of avid for gamblers. The screams don't bother them, they have much more than money at stake.
'Eastern Thoughts' - Exhibition and Book Launch at Head On Photo Festival
From 8th to 14th of May
Opening night - Tuesday 9 May, 6:30pm
Artist Talk - Saturday 13th May, 1:30pm
Stirrup Gallery (142 Addison Road, Marrickville)
In this book, the impossibility of seeing and thinking exactly the same thing twice is a constant reminder of the complexities of life and the easiness of a certain delusion through travel. The text folds together a turmoil of questions of meaning, beauty, history and political lives against the stillness of the photographs taken, 10 inches away from the thoughts that were not, after all, in the same place and time.
Me and Marta guide us through a journey that could have been made a thousand different ways. Set to visit Cambodia and South Vietnam, by land, in a short period of two weeks, the frenetic experience of getting hold of time - and of one's own life - is bold across the book.
The result is an immersive chant of questions and thoughts, glimpses into a world that will never repeat itself again, the struggle of a voice that refuses to be faded.
We see ourselves immersed in a tenacious global culture that cannot surpass the borders of language; home takes on a new meaning at every corner they cross; underground spaces takes us into the confrontation of what it is the privilege of doing what we do and we question if we will ever be able to take hold of our lives and time.
Photographs by Vitor Queiroz and words by Marta Maia.
Eastern Thoughts was, and still is, a journey through unknown culture and landscape, filtered through the lens of an observer, distorted by his own culture.
Marta Maia , in Eastern Thoughts
“Not only the colors seem to aspire for infinity, textures and sizes do the same, closely followed by smells and sounds.
Everything is too much when everything is new and the density of lives is exponentially multiplied by the clustered density of things you can buy. Vast areas full of things you might never need, blinging from afar in tiny, minuscule and small sizes, all that can fit in the pockets of this global place driving us to see the same in every corner we find.
It doesn’t matter if I stand up and scream ‘This is too much’, this is obviously a time in which no one as a voice, discourse and listening have long gone by, so I will at least keep on enjoying the possibility to be, the possibility to let my senses flood, full of what I can still demand to me.
You might build such a good picture of my words as you might get a good description from the digitally frozen moments in time, and for this I can not understand why someone smiles to me, from the other side of the street, but just like me from their own side of the eye, thinking that is the same that we see.”
This project started to take shape while myself and Marta were on the Road in between Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It focuses on the impossibility of living exactly the same experience and it takes the shape of a book where words and pictures sometimes collide and sometimes embrace.
Pre Order now on Amazon