Cody Ellingham's portraits of Bangkok after dark

Cody Ellingham’s first impression of Bangkok wasn’t visual, but literary, through Yukio Mishima’s Temple of Dawn, which takes place in Bangkok in the 1940s and 1950s. The vivid description of the city’s canals and temples left an impression on this globetrotting photographer. “I wanted to come here and see how the modern city had changed with my own eyes,” he says. “I found that the canals had been mostly replaced by congested concrete roads, but still the city had a kind of magic to it.”

环球旅行摄影师 Cody Ellingham 对曼谷的第一印象并非来自视觉，而是来自三岛由纪夫的文学著作《Temple of Dawn》，书中描绘了上世纪四十至五十年代曼谷的城市面貌，生动的文字让 Cody Ellingham 对那里的运河与寺庙记忆犹存。他说：“我希望来到这里亲眼看看这座城市的当代变迁。如今，我发现很多运河都被拥挤不堪的混凝土马路替代，但整座城市依然有一种魔力存在。”

It’s a magic that he captures in Bangkok Phosphors, a stunning portrait of the Thai capital after dark. Similar to his documentations of other Asian metropolises, such as DERIVE and Shanghai Streets, his approach to seeking out shots was largely guided by instinct. “Bangkok was totally unknown for me, as it was my first time here,” he says. “I explored. I wandered, I talked to locals, and I took my time figuring out the city’s layout.”

这样的魔力被 Ellingham 用相机记录在《Bangkok Phosphors》系列作品中，描绘出泰国首都入夜时分令人着迷的城市肖像。与他曾为其他亚洲大都会拍摄的作品类似，比如《DERIVE》和《Shanghai Streets》，Ellingham 通常会根据自己的直觉和本能寻找镜头，“拍摄的时候是我第一次去曼谷，对我来说是完全未知的状态。想要搞清楚城市的布局，要多花点时间，我会把自己沉浸在城市的街道里，与当地人讲话，不断寻找探索的机会。”

As it does in Ellingham’s past works, architecture plays a key role in this photo essay. Bangkok Phosphors juxtaposes dilapidated buildings with futuristic structures to highlight the city’s tug-of-war between modernity and older ways of life, a competition which the former is winning. His palette, which in this series consists of cobalt blues and fluorescent cyans, is another crucial atmospheric detail. These cold tones call to mind the seamy metropolises of cyberpunk fiction, and it’s by design: by drawing comparisons between present-day reality and dystopian sci-fi, Ellingham seems to be asking viewers to think about how our choices today influence the future, and whether or not that’s a future we want to live in.

Cody Ellingham is now raising funds to turn Bangkok Phosphors into a photo book. Learn more on his Kickstarter.

在 Ellingham 过去的作品中，建筑往往是主角。《Bangkok Phosphor》系列作品是一场关于现代与传统的碰撞，让破败不堪的建筑在未来感的框架中胜出。同时，钴蓝和荧光色拼凑成他的调色板，洋溢在每幅画面的细枝末梢处，这样的冷色调唤起人们对大都市赛博朋克风格的种种畅想。Ellingham 用真实写照与反乌托邦式的科幻画笔，带观者以现实角度选择关于未来的去向，引人们思考这是否是我们想要到达的未来境地。