Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

February 7

What's nice is that the lens distortion which sometimes might be seen as a drawback can actually bring forth the actual form of strikes and movements, extending lines and speaking the truth about the moment in a way that a visually "accurate" lens would not, as in this shot where the wide stance, and the rotation coming out up from the floor has a kind of lyrical quality. You can see the communication through lines of force.

February 7

I shot close to the floor as is often suggested on ultrawide, and I've had very dramatic shots from below with the lens in the past, but honestly I prefer the straight on tableau effect. Though, one of the benefits of being low is that architectural elements can really pop an give that Escher like effect (like here). I do like these photos, a lot, but I'm drawn to the wide lens I think much more in terms of that tableau 1960s cinema effect.

February 7

Just some notes from today's casual shoot. I don't always photograph at Chatchai's (we go 2x a month), but it is a great opportunity to just experiment with aesthetics, or to change the way I see.

Ultrawide & Wide for Muay Thai Photography

I've always been very drawn to wide lenses for Muay Thai photography, if only to get away from all the focus on "the action" and the proverbial sweat-spray shot. Mostly I've shot with longer lenses to get away from this moving in the opposite direction, to explore more the psychological aspects of fighting, and to locate what might be called sculptural body forms, but honestly, I've wanted much more to shoot in wider lenses, because I think the sense of space, of emptiness, is really what the art of fighting is about, like scuba diving is about what you do IN the ocean. Its harder to do in fights themselves because you don't have control over your setting and are locked more or less into one or only a few vantage points.

I've been lately interested in the Contax 645 35mm lens (27mm full frame), (above), adapted for the GFX system, in part because it seems to give that "what the eye sees" kind of field of view, something that I find in many of the beautiful films of the 1960s, and some early documentary photography. You can see a short article on the lens that attracted me. I want a little more of that tableau feeling, with some beautiful sample shots. I love this sort of photography, and I'd like to bring that nobility to Muay Thai. What I'm interested in with this Contax lens is that many times I encounter situational muay, often with older fighters, scenes that are full of details and composition, that it just feels like it has to all be captured, rendered, brought forward.

With that in mind I went back to my Fujifilm 8-16mm (12-24mm ff), above, which I really forget how much I love, a wide angle zoom on the X-series cameras that is underrated in the images it can pull. I have shot some very memorable photos with it. Today I shot Sylvie training with Chatchai at his Thai Payak gym in Bangkok just to get reacquainted with the wider view. I want to get used to seeing-in-wide again. You can maybe see what I see even in these somewhat casual shots, the way that the space envelopes the figures, and the figures almost arise from it. Note. I'm not a super technical photographer, and not really a gear person. I see things I like in my mind, my hands, and then look for ways to achieve it. I do like the 8-16mm, and its zoom is really very helpful in muay settings where you cannot change your position easily to alter the composition. With ultrawide this is really important especially regarding the distortion, not only how much distortion there is, but what it is that is distorted. The zoom is super valuable.

photos on this thread are unfortunately compressed and lose sharpness.

I'm hoping to see more wide angle and even ultra wide treatment of the sport, because the art is really all about the spaces that hold it. And I've ordered the Contax lens and the adapter, the first time I'll have shot with a vintage lens. I'm very excited to see what will show up on the very large and detailed GFX files.

February 6

Just to hold, when held down.

February 6

Sometimes I muse that Muay Thai, Thailand's Muay Thai is like the elephant. One time integrated within the society, at the village shore at the forest for instance in Surin (a folding of the human & the elephant culture), and then become the tank of the military empire, then the diesel truck of the lumber and other industry, now almost entirely existing within the country for the tourist, a bend of fate I do not want for Muay Thai...but today, visiting this one who lives near our house, I feel the depression, the majestic depression of her. Today I feel her. A short film study I made.

February 6

Watched Melville 's Second Breath the other night, on the big screen, was very moved. What is it that makes him so incomparable? The light, the classic masculine, the pace. A synthesis of structure and Life.

images.webp.7c9eee92ec1d852e630cbe9f786d9f37.webp

February 6

like an orchard in a battlefield.

cixous

February 6

If...

you are not your thoughts

a fighter is not their strikes.

February 6

Beautiful by Cixous on Paris of her youth, could be the same on the simulcrum of social media.

February 4

On 1/28/2025 at 3:57 PM, Diego Sanchez C said:

Thank you Kevin for your response. It's interesting to hear Kaensak saidthat training on the pads was like charging batteries...as I remember it as the complete opposite finishing the 3rd round of 6 minutes with no strength at all, ie dead battery. hahaha...of course I never got to be in a physical state like these historical fighters. Maybe that's the big difference Hey thanks for continuing to watch and analyze the world of muay thai in thailand. Your and Sylvie's analysis of the fights have been very revealing, almost like deciphering a language or something like that. Great job! I wish you all the best!

I believe he meant "charging the battery" as in conditioning you to be strong for an up coming fight, ie, you wouldn't do pads like that unless you were ramping up. But...I'm not entirely sure. I do feel though that he meant it to mean "not to learn techniques, etc"

February 3

Sylvie uses a wonderful term to describe the Westernization of Thailand's Muay Thai, through its Entertainment commodification. She says the West is terraforming Thai Muay Thai, and then taking glory for beating Thais in the new, terraformed world. It's a powerful analogy.

February 3

I'm working on a 10 Principles of Golden Age (Old Tongue) Muay Thai project. I hope it will be interesting to a few.

January 31

Understanding Ruup

This remarkable account on how the abbot of the Doi Suthep wat in Chiang Mai (Wat Phra Thai Doi Suthep) circumvented the practice and theoretical barrier which prevented monks from becoming a spirit medium, as he importantly embodied the past Siam King Chulalongkorn. This account tells you just how important, and powerful, the lines of posture and expression are, and how past deities descend into this world, expressing themselves in Thai traditional circumstances, things that also communicate themselves through Muay Thai.

You can download the full article here:

January 31

There a beautiful story here, back in 2016. Sylvie was given a chance to win the Northern 105 Muay Siam belt, but she would have to beat Faa Chiang Rai, one of the best female fighters in Thailand for the 3rd time in a row in a month...and do it in her home province of Chiang Rai. We really thought that there was no way that they would give Sylvie the win on points, just because of circumstances, but Sylvie somehow pulled it out. She was awarded the belt, but then within the week (I believe) that she was stripped of it because farang could not hold the belt. It was given back to Faa. Sylvie wrote about the fight here. It was just such an incredible moment, being able to fight for a prestigious belt, a belt hermetic to Thailand itself, and even winning it, and then having it stripped, that in-between time before Thai name belts were starting to be made for Westerners, both in terms of audience and victory, the changing of rules, the opening up of the stadia. This was another time.

But the beautiful part of it all is that even though Sylvie took Faa's belt in her home province, one way or another, 8 years later Sylvie arranged for Faa to fight for (and win for herself), the WBC World Title (I think at 105 lbs), I believe a title she still holds. This is the curious, beautiful gift of Sylvie, she weaves together Muay. Faa went from a Northern Muay Siam title to a WBC World Title, through Sylvie.

January 31

If you'd like to look deeper into the Symbolic Form of the portrait in Siam and Thailand, this is a very good article on the cult of King Chulalongkorn portraits that rose up in the 1980s and 1990s. The Thai attitude toward images as sacred, in the case of Kings & deities, cannot be wholly separated from how photography of the human form itself, and its portrait visage is interpreted. This is not just superstition, relegated beliefs from the past, it is part of an aesthetic form of symbolic expression.

Portraits That_Matter King Chulalongkorn PDF

Portraits_That_Matter_King_Chulalongkorn.pdf

a selection:

January 31

I've felt some pretty strong disillusionment as a photographer, which pretty much comes in line with the overall dilution of meaningfulness in digital communications, as everything gets stretched out into endless (truly endless) digital series, consumed in scrolls, catching affect-torquing algorithm effects (or not), much of it aligned to dopamine hits, which stresses us out into over-stimmed depression beasts.

We take photos because this little fragment of reality...matters. And the art of the camera, its alchemy, is applying rites, practices and crafts to that image to bring that meaningfulness forth. To just dump that carved piece of the REAL into a knowledge mill, into a vast encryption pulverization is just fundamentally wrong, and deprives the photograph of the very sort of sacred (yes, sacred) life it was given. This is a fundamental crisis...and deeply affects even how I relate to my own images, or even the desire to take them.

I've always felt that this problem is one of occasional aesthetics, that there must be forms out there, waiting to be created, which deny some aspects of this digital pulverization. (This I suppose are what galleries are for, or printed prints on walls in homes...to forestall the profanation.) This problem is absolutely unresolved, but...

This morning I began editing my photographs of Kru Hem at TDet99 from yesterday and the first two photographs really spoke to me. They spoke to me as a pair. Together, they held a symbolic form, I might say. So I asked myself, how in this digital time (I refuse Instagram...actually since my Instagram account suddenly vanished several years ago, for no reason at all, but also because its form for photographs is dead wrong), could I even present them as a Symbolic Form, as a Two? What would be in some sense homological to how it might be if they hung on a wall, framed, side by side? The question was a very simple one, one that instinctively felt had an answer...at least a partial answer. I imagined, just place them in relationship to themselves in video (video holding its own very serious, de-aestheticizing problems in the scroll), but do so using a feature that I believe is what made large screen cinema different. The secret to cinema's magic was that the size of the screen cannot be taken in in a single glance. The action may occur here or there, but there are always areas of the screen to explore, at any given moment in the flow of time. The viewing eye sculpts, as it selects attention, in the narrative. (This is something, a magic, that no longer operates within our world of small screens.)

I just entered one of these photos and selected out frames within the frame, and placed them in tempo with the overall frame, mimicking in part some of the nature of cinematic magic. I have no idea how or if this changes how the images may be received and experienced in various digital flows and scroll/refreshes, within the pulverization mill which grinds our attention, packaged for exchange in markets, but it DID change how I related to my photographs themselves. The process pulled me into them, and brought the pleasure of the large files I'm able to shoot with. I love exploring the worlds and pieces of worlds within a single frame, so it made me happy with my art, it changed the possible within it, rather than de-spiriting it.

January 27

There is a decisive moment in Lynch's Mohulland Drive when Betty having aced her audition meets the director's eyes, as he is about to make his own decisive (necessary) compromise with his Desire, and she turns to run to the solipsism of her own Desire (refusing her own necessary compromise), only to head into the nightmare of her own Desire refusing her...that alternate reality which always runs parallel.

January 27

Muay Europe. A phrase Sylvie came up with the other day.

This runs adjunct to the fast commodification of Muay Thai.

January 27

Chartri has one fundamental problem. The magical fighter was created by traditional Muay Thai, and he is trying with all his might to destroy traditional Muay Thai. He is left with only the simulation of magic, a hocus-pocus of increasingly untenable hype and fragmentation, as the intial borrowing of mesmerizing talent and skill ftom the tradion bleeds out, ages out, of his product. As fighting dumbs down in his vision of endless knockouts, his sport heads toward Bangla Stadium level performativity, the putting on of shows for the visitor...a visitor who ultimately becomes only him and his distortive vision, something erotic to distract and extract...while the culture of the sport and art wastes away.

The magical fighter cannot be simulated. The human eye knows the difference.

January 27

In reading Campagna Technic and Magic, which argues the metaphysical roots of the mechanization of the world, we can see where the replicable "combo" in a series fits even in pictures of representation.

The subsumption and deprivleging of the specifity of the art.

January 26

Honestly though, its shocking how many subtle skills these boys have, skills (or perhaps...qualities) that grown men (& women) who have devoted themself to the sport/art for many years, don't have.

January 26

On 1/23/2025 at 8:33 PM, Diego Sanchez C said:

Hi

I have this question going around in my head for a few years. I haven't been able to find really an answer. How much power should put behind your strikes while hitting pads? I trained for very long time in Thailand, there I was training to blow up the pads and bags as much as I could...:)...I red John Wayne Parr had the same idea about hitting pads. He used to train trying to break trainer arms every time

I see a lot of videos of guys hitting like 50 or less power, also hitting soft pads, Fairtex, even mitts...

Was I totally wrong training that way? Are we suposed to hit softer, and because of language barrier I didn't realized it? I guess both could be right and wrong

Thanks for he answers

BR

There are two schools of thought on this. Padholding is now used, often, to teach techniques, but in Thailand's past it was much more of conditioning, rhythm-making training mechanism. Kaensak said it was used to "charge the battery". One reason why it could work in that way was because the kaimuay was full of training many other aspects of fighting, including lots of play-sparring, and timing building training.

A better approach, given that kaimuay training has been somewhat lost to the sport, is to use padwork to build your own sense of control and rhythm taking, turning padwork much more into a dialogue. But...this takes an advanced, experienced padholder, usually a former experienced stadium fighter, who can work in that way. You want to build and change intensities, work at different distances, etc. One of the most important (and neglected) things in fighting is control over distance, and varying tempo/intensity. When you have a good padman, these things can be work with.

January 26

The grassroots of Thailand's Muay Thai, consistent of networks of small kaimuay gyms and local side-bet fight scenes in the provinces are left with two impotent choices: join the stream of endless labor supply to Entertainment aggression fighting, getting knocked out for content...or, enter Bangkok gambled stadia fighting, and lose to big gym name fighters the promoters are building, carefully sculpting your muay so fit within a conservative spectrum of fighting...ie, when you lose, it can't be blameable on a singular, pointed out mistake you have made. Blame has to be dispersive, because you and your gym have little social power. In either case, its the grassroot kaimuay who are feeding Capital Muay. The problem is that Capital, in its scissoring of the sport, pushing it towards rudiments, strips it of its complexity, a complexity that traditionally reached its apex in the Capital (in the 1970s-1990s).

The source of this complexity though likely resides in the provinces themselves. That argument:

January 26

On 1/25/2025 at 9:45 AM, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Watching this fight today. Two insanely skilled 9 year olds. The beating heart of trad Muay still alive.

Trad Muay Thai Not Dead Yet. This Incredibly Skilled fight between 9 year olds. Femeu spacing and timing, linking strikes with eyes & rhythm, not in memorized combos, rounds of Muay Khao fighting, fluid knees upon knees. Old School Ruup, Sanae, art & dominance. It's beautiful that this kind of developed muay can still happen in Thailand, it tells us that grassroots the art, style and knowledge is still living, despite the onslaught embrace of Entertainment values, mostly made for foreigners. Though, as can be seen in other young femeu fighters, as these young fighters grow into the Bangkok scene they will likely lose a lot of this art, as betting pressures and a general conservative, simplifying cultural force will rob much of the fluency and expression. At this age they reflect very significant aspects of Golden Age fighting, things very hard to find in the sport now, but the trends of the sport then strip away the freedom and continuity. We have a historical condition now where the art & really sophistication of the sport's legacy exists in the provinces, whereas in the Capital Thailand's Muay Thai has be contorted by capital interests, both in its Entertainment varieties (made for the non-Thai tourist/consumer) AND by the compressed, illiberal, online-fueled betting culture of stadium fighting. Entertainment Muay Thai dumbs down the vocabulary and expressive value of the sport, attempting to create a violence-oriented, casuals product (altering the sophistication of the sport, and its essential Thai dominance over aggression DNA); and stadium betting Muay Thai, because of the oversized power of gambler influence, drains away the complexity of the art, as fighters and small gyms are forced into stylistic straight jackets, avoiding risk-taking, and creative intricacy. Broadly speaking Entertainment fighters know, in the extreme, their job is to get knocked out (a notable Thai Entertainment fighter said this to me), and grass roots fighters in stadium Muay Thai know their job is to not lose face, leaving no room for the development of the kinds of skills and expression that we see in this fight.

January 25

This is very good. Berardi on control. What this says of the liberatory potential of Trad Kaimuay Muay Thai.

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