TEXT & PHOTO: MINTRA WONGBANCHAI
(For Thai, press here)
In “Night Wander II”, a sequel to Night Wander, the artist set up and captured images of ordinary daily activities in suburban houses of San Francisco. Taken through windows or gates, the photos show some people watching TV, others reading books or cleaning their houses. While the houses were brightly lit, the photographer was pressing the shutter button in the dark.
In the artist’s viewpoint, the night-time atmosphere and all the lights inside these houses in “Night Wander II” amplify her repression, longing for her family and places in her hometown as well as loneliness and lack of identity resulting from being apart from her loved ones, society and culture.
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Mintra Wongbanchai
This photographer graduate from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL) is also the runner-up of Harper’s BAZAAR Canon Fashion Photography Award in 2009. After working as a fashion stylist in Bangkok, she continued her study at the Academy of Art in the City by the Bay where her interest in art photography grew. Currently living and working in the northern Thai province Lampang, Wongbanchai also guest-lectures at Creative Photography Division, Faculty of Fine Arts, Chiang Mai University. Fond of night photography and long exposure technique, she believes the night-time darkness simultaneously conveys solitude and peacefulness.