The Old Faces of Muay Thai - A Photo Within a Photo | Dejrat Gym in the Golden Age

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

 

There is a very strange experience, drifting slowly through this photograph as the faces of the fighters and krus of the Dejrat Gym in the mid-90s. Just seeing the photo as it was on the wall would never elicit this feeling. Even standing before it, there is very little psychology, very little sense of individual histories. Rather, one might get a sense of a moment in history, this history, this gym. But, as the screen pulls across these faces the entire photograph opens up. You can see and feel the differing disposition of each man or boy, the qualities of their nature, as they face the hardness of the art and sport of Muay Thai. They are all differing materials, exposed to the same forceful wind. There is just such extraordinary variety and humanity here, revealed at this level of a view. In some ways, the documentation of a photograph can always give and bring more, than whatever we imagined of it. This photo has hung there, low on the wall, near the training ropes of the ring, for countless years. An anchor-point to a year back in time. But, here it becomes another kind of thing. A record, caught on a sliver of time, and somehow it all seems precious, and Muay Thai itself of that time feels precious. You can feel it eradiating.

Muay photography feels like it should do something like this. Because it is a historical form it should capture more than it seems to, capture in the sense of a net cast, not knowing completely what is in there. We are documenting more than events, or physical dynamics. We are capturing times, and because it is an art, we are capturing times that are layered, sedimented with other times.  We do not even know all the things that are in our pictures.

This is the original photo:

 

This photo is also part of my photo essay Chatchainoi: The Man of Stone