Embracing AMBIGUITY

Shane Bunnag is back in Bangkok with another mindbending photo exhibition

Instead of capturing a moment as we would remember, I wanted to question if that moment ever existed as such

After last year’s successful stint at Kathmandu Photo Gallery, Paris-based Thai-British independent filmmaker Shane Bunnag is back in Bangkok with his latest metaphysical photo project, “Gradiva”. Exhibiting from today until Sept 9, Gradiva is a photographic evolution to “Dryopes” — Shane’s previous exhibition, wherein he explores his own personal life and the concept of change, memories and mythology by using haunting and obscure figures of the female form.

While Dryopes was highly profound and concept-heavy, Shane seems to take a step back in Gradiva to explore the idea of the blurred form itself — a form which “exists briefly before the rational mind and its protective familiarity take control”.

Thumb-tacked on the walls of the gallery are pictorial long-exposure shots — both coloured and black-andwhite — of the blurred female form. Some figures, wearing long flowy dresses, are immersed in the lush forests and serene beaches of Europe and Thailand (which he connects with), while some are nude, swooping gracefully in front of a plain white background. It is difficult to make out what’s happening, but that’s the whole point.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the blur in early photography,” he says. “Due to the chemistry, the long exposures, 19th-century documentary street scenes or portraits often had some blurriness — unintentional traces of abstract forms and phantoms which subvert the image and add a piquancy. It underscores the feeling that what we are seeing is past — that the participants are long gone and the place forever transformed. I find early photography and these incidental details incredibly compelling, perhaps even more than the intended subject.”

For Shane, the blur refocuses our perceptions as well as opening it up to more possibilities. It’s like something organic and beautiful, and, like smoke and fire, is impossible to recreate. Being much more interested in capturing the seemingly imperceptible shifts between moments, the blur or motion, for Bunnag, conveys a sense of ambiguity and change and an underlying chaos.

“Instead of capturing a moment as we would remember, I wanted to question if that moment ever existed as such, by allowing the unseen, the obscure, and indistinct, even the anarchic to emerge,” he explains. “So in a sense, the images are non-photos in that they don’t attempt to replicate or capture reality, but rather disrupt our preconceptions of reality to allow for the otherwise unknowable to manifest.”

The title “Gradiva” reflects that as well. Meaning “She who walks” in Latin, Gradiva is a modern mythical figure first created by German writer Wilhelm Jensen in 1903. In the novella, a young archaeologist is fascinated by an antique bas-relief (which actually exists) and gives her the name Gradiva. Later on, he meets her in the ruins of Pompeii — not certain if he is awake or dreaming.

“[The novel] captivated Freud and subsequently a string of artists and filmmakers,” says Bunnag — such as Andre Brenton, Salvador Dali, Robbe-Grillet and Leos Carax. In almost all of these instances, it has been associated with the search for a woman, an elusive figure who treads a path between dream and reality, who is both intimate and animate — a woman stepping out of a marble structure.”

“There is an idea, with which I agree to a certain extent,” he continues, “that photos are not reality, but if you take a photo of something unreal, you make it real.”