Ohm Phanphiroj
H Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand
Ohm Phanphiroj’s series of photographs of pubescent male sex workers in Bangkok filters the conventions of ethnographic photography through the rhetoric of the fashion spread. The lush photos depict the mostly topless kids posed impassively against chiaroscuro backdrops of artfully illuminated streets. As ethnographic documents, the images in ‘Underage’ (2010) lack a pronounced sense of realism or transparency; as glossy photographs of young sex workers, they complicate mere aesthetic delectation.
Phanphiroj’s images emerge as highly provocative insofar as the artist encourages us to look at these kids as we imagine their clients might – as available objects of desire. Our consequent sense of unease cannot be displaced as it could be by more ‘straight’ reportage or by staged magazine pulp. In the first instance, the photographs don’t appear to have a specific political or social context. Phanphiroj doesn’t explicitly link these kids’ lives to, say, the social conditions that might have forced this choice of work. However, the photographic series is accompanied by a film (also titled Underage) in which the artist interviews the kids about their experiences and dreams. The film is so depressing as to be nearly unwatchable: from brief descriptions of the youths’ sexual practices to a scene in which one of the children cries while talking about being abandoned by his mother. In both the film and the photographs, the kids themselves remain the objects of interest, not the fact of sex work per se, but their effect is altogether different. While the film aims to evoke sympathy or empathy – its soundtrack is a Thai folk ballad sung by one of the subjects – the photographs are far more ambiguous in this regard. This begs the question of why the photographs don’t attempt what the film is explicitly concerned with. Does the film function to mitigate the unease, if not guilt, that the photos produce? If we think we look at these kids as a paedophile might, they also stare back at us. Many appear resigned, some defiant. There is even the occasional smile.
The photographs inevitably prompt questions about the artist’s intentions and the conditions under which they were taken. To what extent was the series stage-managed? Did Phanphiroj pay his subjects? Ultimately, we are left with no choice but to see these kids and consider their circumstances. One cannot concede that this exhibition is ‘merely’ voyeuristic; something more complex is at work. Susan Sontag argued that not naming the subjects of documentary photographs is a condition of their objectification, and here, Phanphiroj titles the works with numbers (Underage No. 1, 2, etc.). While it would be difficult to imagine how publicizing the names of these kids wouldn’t be controversial, Phanphiroj’s nomenclature does point to his rehearsal of major critiques of photography. Because the photographs have no context or narrative as such, they risk stereotyping and stigmatization: ‘prostitute’ can only be signified by their appearance as young Thai men of a certain class. Further, the raison d’être of ‘Underage’ is the suggestion that child sex work in Thailand should be highlighted and exposed. But this reinforces the fact that these children are typically defined by someone else’s vision; hence, in this particular context, much unease.
Faced with the provocation of the images, one could choose to look away. Sontag’s widely quoted statement in Regarding the Pain of Others (2004), ‘Let the atrocious images haunt us’ might be adapted here to ‘Let the images fascinate us’. Sontag seems to imply that the contextual and the analytical risks distract from the impact of the image itself and, by extension, considerations of what an image is and does. Phanphiroj’s photographs get under your skin, so that the issue of sexual exploitation and abuse of children is no longer somewhere ‘out there’. Here, it becomes a question of our personal relationship or culpability to the ways a child’s life can become commodified and sold – both on the street and as art.
Brian Curtin
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