One of the first things a tourist learns in Thailand are the words ‘Sawadee’ combined with the wai gesture. It originated over 2,000 years ago in Hinduism with the Añjali Mudrā gesture, which accompanies ‘namaste’ and was adopted by Buddhism.
It was a yogic posture, the equal meeting of the palms symbolising that the other party is treated as an equal human being. As well as greetings it’s also used for farewells, thanking, apologising, asking for mercy and expressing various forms of politeness and respect.
Thais have strict hierarchies and the wai is central in how this is acted out everyday. Greeting an equal sees your palms meet at your chest, waiing someone older or in a position of authority like your teacher or boss, sees your hands at chin height. Waiing a monk, buddha image or royalty puts your hands at your forehead with a bow of the head. Older people don’t have to return the wai of younger people and customers don’t have to return the wai of shop workers. How someone wais you has huge symbolism to how they see you, and who is in the dominant role in the relationship.
I became interested in how widespread this gesture is depicted, in religious contexts, muay Thai, Khon dance, massage, but also in commercial mascots, public notices, stickers and clip art. Despite its fading popularity with the younger generation, I want to show how this gesture has become a symbol of Thai identity on so many levels.
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Barry Macdonald (b. 1984) is a freelance photographer from London, England. He started off shooting musicians and found out about the enjoyment of travelling from going on tour with bands around Europe and the USA. His work has evolved into a hybrid of street and documentary. He is interested in sociology and tries to look at culture and human nature through his photography. He has lived in Bangkok, Thailand since 2022.
If you were to pick one object that best represents who you are, what would it be? Your everyday glasses? A favorite book? Perhaps the pocket inhaler you never leave home without? Each choice offers a fun yet revealing challenge, balancing personal reflection with creative expression. But what if that object were your bag? How might it speak for you?
art4d x FREITAG come join forces for a special photography campaign titled ‘FREITAG and My Identity,’ inviting people from all walks of life to express who they are through their trusted FREITAG companion.
Among the many submissions, one stood out for its quiet strength and emotional resonance: Carrying Everything, Everywhere by Malinee Mendonca, a #FULLTIMEMOTHER whose photograph beautifully captures not only an aesthetic sensibility but also the profound, everyday poetry of motherhood.
Other participants, too, revealed striking interpretations of identity, from #ARCHITECT and #SHOPKEEPER to #INTERIORARCHITECT and #VETERINARIAN. Some brought together animals, people, and objects in delightfully unexpected ways, creating scenes that both charm and disarm.
In the end, no award or recognition can define or diminish one’s individuality— because being yourself is the most precious gift in every moment of life. To be yourself is to love yourself, and through that self-love, to share that love with others.
“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” – RuPaul
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Malinee Mendonca
Occupation: Full-time Mother
Title of the Photo: Carrying Everything, Everywhere
No matter how near or far, this FREITAG bag is my go-to companion — tough, durable, and easy to carry, whether over the shoulder or as a backpack.
Teechalit Chularat
Occupation: Architect
Title of the Photo: Art Play Work
Beyond being functional and eco-conscious, FREITAG celebrates the art of composition through pattern and color. Its playfulness inspires me every time I use it. This photo reflects my true self; someone who loves art, photography, and carrying tools that make creative work easy, just like FREITAG’s own philosophy.
Phachara Lertphadungtham
Occupation: Interior Architect, Branding, and AI Experience Strategist
Title of the Photo: Title of the Photo: Layers in 3D
FREITAG, one of my life’s (p)layers (not just layers), still takes center stage.
Thanaphat Kongwongwilai
Occupation: Footwear Seller
Title of the Photo: Be Yourself
Whatever the color, it never clashes, as long as it’s your own.
Grish Chengsuebsant
Occupation: Entrepreneur
Title of the Photo: The Business Man
“I came here to drop some money, droppin’ all my money 💴”
Nimitporn Tanwan
Occupation: Business Owner
Title of the Photo: All in One
The idea came from my F302 ROY, a large, beloved FREITAG bag that fits everything I need. Wherever I travel, one bag is all it takes.
Rattapong Angkasith
Occupation: Architect / Lecturer
Title of the Photo: Stillness in Transit
Amid the sounds, smells, and movements of the busy market, I stand still for a brief moment. The world keeps moving, yet I feel calm inside. This moment captures a quiet pause, a stillness within the everyday chaos.
Methawin Sawaikoetsiri
Occupation: Veterinarian
Title of the Photo: FAI-THAK / FREITAG
Whether you read it as FAI-THAK, a playful twist on kwai (buffalo), or as FREITAG, what matters is sharing the same love for recycling and a more livable world.
Phongsakorn Langkakad
Occupation: Photographer
Title of the Photo: Art in 360
Since art exists everywhere, I wanted to bring out as much of it as possible. Starting from my black-and-white F40, which already carried its own artistic character, I wanted the clothes I wore to harmonize with the bag slung at my side.
And that’s where the idea began. I sprayed black paint onto a white shirt, used paper cutouts in oval shapes to mask certain areas, and created an image that connects visually with the bag. Then I flicked small drops of color onto the surface and considered extending the design onto the back strap to complete the composition, turning it into a new kind of wearable artwork that wraps around the body in a full 360 degrees.
Each piece is unique: one bag to one shirt. When worn, the whole artwork comes together and can be carried anywhere you go.
Rang Ainpan
Occupation: Architect
Title of the Photo: The Architect’s Canvas
An architect and FREITAG is a perfect union of endurance and sustainable creativity. Amid the battlefield of architectural life, where blueprints scatter across the floor alongside tools and instruments of the trade, my recycled tarp FREITAG bag rests on my shoulder as a steadfast companion. It is more than just a bag. It embodies resilience, individuality, and sustainability. This image reflects who I am and how I work: creating things that endure, that stand against challenges, and that merge seamlessly with FREITAG’s spirit of thoughtful, lasting design.
At the Heart of Faith: A Portrait of Bangkok’s Indian Community
The idea for At the Heart of Faith began shortly after the exhibition Connect at Bangkok Design Week 2025, which explored how art can bridge cultures through shared space and emotion. Following that event, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) invited me to develop a new cultural project, an outdoor photographic exhibition to coincide with the city’s Diwali Festival. The goal was to highlight the long-established Indian community of Phahurat, known as Bangkok’s Little India, and its enduring place within the capital’s diverse urban fabric.
The vision was clear, to portray the vibrant yet often overlooked life of a community where faith, trade, and tradition coexist within a modern metropolis. The BMA sought to celebrate cultural diversity; I sought to explore the human thread that connects Indian communities across borders, from India to Thailand, through the shared language of belief and belonging.
The project combines two visual worlds, photographs made in India and a new body of work created in Phahurat. Together, they form a dialogue between communities that share the same spiritual rhythm. At its center stands the Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Bangkok’s principal Sikh temple, whose golden dome rises above the neighborhood as a symbol of faith and continuity.
Around the temple, life moves at its own pace, tailors at their sewing machines, vendors selling fabrics and spices, elders gathered in quiet conversation. These are the daily gestures that sustain a community shaped by work, worship, and resilience.
Here, faith is not only observed in ritual but expressed through everyday acts of care, perseverance, and connection, an enduring testament to the living spirit of Bangkok’s Little India.
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Samatcha Apaisuwan is a Bangkok-based photographer and creative director with over 30 years of experience in visual arts and design. His work explores the connection between culture, faith, and everyday life through a documentary approach. He has collaborated widely across art and cultural institutions as well as leading news and media networks, including the Bangkok Post, Thai PBS World, and the Financial Times.
An attempt to piece together fragments of memory through the city’s elements, seen from the perspective of an outsider. A landscape constructed as a stage for leisure, designed to bring joy, provide comfort, and soothe the mind with entertainment for both its residents and visitors. This reflection draws partly on Delirious New York (1978) by Rem Koolhaas, the architect and theorist whose work has profoundly shaped contemporary architecture. In that book, Koolhaas dissected and laid bare the very making of New York City, particularly the island of Manhattan.
The series of photographs seeks to connect certain truths in Delirious New York with America in Passing (1991), the photobook by Henri Cartier-Bresson, which captured the ordinariness and realities of American life during the 1940s to 1960s.
American life in 2025, scattered and fragmented, emerges in spaces and objects devoted to leisure throughout Manhattan. Yet together these fragments continue to render the metropolis as a vast screen, a colossal television screen, endlessly projecting images of life, of dreams, and of death. On repeat, without end.
Dear Rem, I am very frustrated.
Dear Henri,
I feel so disconnected.
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Bhumibhat Promboot, architect and lecturer, is drawn to buildings, trees, spirits, and animals.
Fireworks festivals in Japan, or Hanabi Taikai, are more than a spectacle of colours across the night sky. They are gatherings where people sit together beneath the stars, waiting for beauty that exists only for a fleeting moment. Each firework blooms like a flower—radiant, resplendent, and vanishing swiftly. It is precisely this transience that leaves its mark upon the heart.
For me, attending the Nagaoka Fireworks Festival was a dream I had carried since childhood. In Japanese comics, I once saw crowds look up at skies ablaze with sparks, and I longed to witness that vision for myself. When at last I stood among the summer throngs, my camera did not merely capture bursts of light; it preserved the feelings and memories that tied me back to those childhood images—once confined to paper, now alive before my eyes.
What made that night unforgettable was not only the fireworks but the atmosphere around me. Families spread picnic mats, shared food, and waited together. When the first explosion echoed, the sky bloomed in colour; elders gazed with serene eyes while children’s laughter rang across the park. It was a scene of warmth that bound countless strangers into one. And when the final spark faded, the sky returned to darkness. Yet what vanished above still glowed within: a reminder that beauty is not meant to last forever, but to teach us the value of each fleeting moment shared beneath the same sky.
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Richard Saesong is a 3D Modeling & Visualizer. Speaking may not be his most natural form of expression, so he turns to photography as a language of its own—one that reflects who he is and how he sees the world. Through tones, lines, subtle movements, and quiet atmospheres, his images remain simple and accessible, yet they preserve the depth and nuances of emotion in their entirety.
This series began at home: my husband was with me, but always on his phone. I felt the screen had taken my place. That feeling began A Modern Day Affair.
The work looks at how phones reshape relationships. Many images are self-portraits; others focus on small details—a cracked screen protector on a cake or notes on a door. Some moments are real; others are imagined but remain emotionally true.
In a clean, staged style, the photographs mix humor and sadness to show how people drift apart even when sitting side by side. I am not blaming phones; rather, I am asking how often we choose screens over connection without noticing.
Lighting, color, and composition add a surreal touch. The series is ongoing. Rooted in personal experience, it remains relatable. It is a reminder to look up and attend to one another.
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Kantaya New is a Thai Singaporean photo artist working across conceptual and street photography. Her street practice finds overlooked, serendipitous moments in daily life, while her conceptual work uses staged scenes and objects to invite reflection—often on how technology shapes relationships. Based in Singapore, she is finalizing A Modern Day Affair and developing new work.
Her work has been exhibited internationally and has received recognition in several renowned competitions such as LensCulture Critics’ Choice, Fujifilm Moment Street Photo Awards and Sony World Photography Awards.
“Whenever I walk past small corners of the city, I often see cats leaping with natural ease. Without preparation, without ritual, these brief moments capture a sense of simple living. Such glimpses become like quiet notes, reminding us that certain beauty is always hidden in the little things around us.”
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Puttipong Nipatutit (Amp) A passionate photographer and owner of a small digital print studio.
I have fainted one or two times on the street every summer for a while since moving to Tokyo. Whenever I fainted, I couldn’t help but get scared imagining myself drowning in the crowds, the swirl of information, and heat of the city that seemed unable to escape from. At one point, those things inspired me to create the different landscape of Tokyo.
The work’s theme is to have the ‘fictional Tokyo’ appear in a photograph by digital photo editing. Based on the rules I set for my work, I remove conspicuous visual noise such as windows, electric poles, advertising, people, and trash. The act of removing visual elements that bother as much noise as possible seems to have Tokyo stripped down to its real figure = nude.
Today, humans’ sense of community has shifted to the online world. Under such circumstances, I felt some sort of nostalgia in the landscape of Tokyo outside the walls. This sense of nostalgia motivates me to make works.
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Rumi Ando is a photographer and retoucher. After graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts with a degree in Advanced Art Expression, she has been creating works mainly using photographic media. Incorporating image processing techniques, she produces photographs of urban landscapes that blend reality and fiction.
In Italy, hanging laundry is more than just a daily chore. It’s a visual ritual that captivates photographers.
Clothes fluttering between historic buildings, draped from windowsills or stretched across terracotta walls in cities like Venice, Florence, Siena, and Bologna, create an unassuming beauty. Some lines are perfectly arranged, while others are charmingly haphazard, yet all of them transform into unfiltered scenes full of color and warmth.
Outdoor laundry infuses life into narrow alleys and blank façades. Each garment on the line becomes more than just fabric. It tells a story of its owner, of families, of changing seasons, and of the quiet rhythms of community life.
Photographing these sunlit lines is a way to preserve authentic cultural detail. With nothing more than natural sunlight, a passing breeze, and the unstudied skill of Italian homemakers who hang each piece with care, these everyday moments become sources of inspiration, yielding images rich with atmosphere and meaning.
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Kongkiat Samangsri (Kong) is a pharmacist with a passion for travel and minimalist photography.
If we’re being honest, most people heading to Expo 2025 Osaka probably have one main goal in mind: to see the pavilions they’ve been eyeing. Whether it’s out of curiosity about what each country will showcase or simply hoping their visit will be the lucky charm that finally wins them the lottery. Well, who doesn’t want a bit of good fortune?
But beyond the spectacle of each elaborate pavilion, there’s something else that absolutely deserves a mention: the Grand Ring, an enormous wooden structure officially known as the ‘Ring of Hearts.’ Walking into it for the first time, the only reaction that comes to mind is, “Whoa… it’s that big?” And it’s not just about the sheer size. It’s full of refined, unmistakably Japanese sensibilities. The interplay of light and shadow is stunning with every step. You don’t feel like you’re just looping around. You feel like you’re constantly moving through something new.
Now, all of that is impressive on its own. But what I really want to talk about today is… the restroom, folks!
Often overlooked, the restrooms here have been remarkably well thought out. Some are so beautifully designed they feel like miniature pavilions themselves. You might go in expecting to just do your business, but it turns into a bit of an architectural exploration. Some even have separate entrances and exits. It’s clever, though a little disorienting if you’re not used to it. A few people even got lost. But it’s the kind of lost that makes you laugh, not panic. More like, “LOL, wrong way out,” than anything serious.
But! One important warning:
Before heading in, check the signs carefully.
Some of these restrooms have design quirks, and if you’re not paying attention… you might end up with a very unexpected, unforgettable experience.
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Peerapat Wimolrungkarat (Add) is a photographer who loves capturing still moments that move within memory.
Leica Ambassador (Thailand)
Architecture photography @somethingarchitecture
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