TEXT & PHOTO: SUKRIT PATJUNTADUSIT
(For Thai, press here)
“The whisper of the factories is louder than the cries of the villagers.”
The sentence comes from a community representative in Rayong, a province where residents have long lived with the consequences of industrial pollution. Factory smoke carrying foul odours and unexplained chemical leaks into the sea becoming recurring incidents, returning seemingly every year. Marine life has begun to disappear. Fishermen are losing their livelihoods. Concerns about public health have intensified alongside rising cancer rates.
SOMETHING IN EVERYTHING is an experimental photo essay developed through fieldwork in Rayong. Working with photographic film, Sukrit Patjuntadusit employs the process known as ‘film soup.’
For this series, the film was exposed not only to light, but to the residues of industrial harm: wastewater flowing from factory drainage pipes into the sea; water from a treatment pond that had leaked into community waterways; chemically contaminated soil from a rubber plantation beside a factory that had previously caught fire; ash from chemical drums; and crude oil collected by villagers after the 2022 oil pipeline leak washed ashore at Mae Ramphueng Beach.
Once the film was developed and the images began to emerge, the photographs revealed the material trace of these effects. Colours became distorted. Chemical residues left visible stains. Acidic compounds corroded the film, damaging and deforming its surface. Through this experimental process, the work makes perceptible the possibility that what corrodes the film may also have the capability to affect the human body.
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Pao Sukrit Patjuntadusit, also known as SiiXTY-4 (64), is a photographer and photographic artist. He currently works as a freelance photographer across commercial and event-based projects. As an artist, Pao is drawn to environmental questions, traces of human activity, and the fragile boundaries of what it means to be human. He lives in Bangkok, a city dense with civilization, noise, and disorder.