“Some people look at my pictures for a long time. I don’t know how to feel about this. They tell me that my pictures are too blurred and seem unfinished and lonely in appearance,” says Kornkrit Jianpinidnan, speaking about his photos. “For some people, my pictures are right, and for some of them, my pictures are wrong. When people see my work, I want them to make questions for me. I want them to ask themselves what is happening in that moment. They have to ask ‘why?’”

Kornkrit is a Bangkok based, internationally acclaimed photographer, having had his work exhibited in Tokyo, Barcelona and Brussels. After growing up in Chiang Rai, he moved to Chiang Mai to study in the faulty of arts at Chiang Mai University.

With soft eyes and a gracious personality, Kornkrit smiles as he offers some insight into his family background. “My family are not so interested in art. My brother is following in my footsteps though, and he is studying oil painting at the moment. He lives and works in Chiang Mai. My mother is a housewife and my father worked for the family business fixing cars.”

Kornkrit majored in printmaking and quickly and soon decided that Chiang Mai was just too small and limited for his goals. “I came to Bangkok in 1998 because there was nothing for me in Chiang Mai,” he says. “I love Chiang Mai, but for my career I had to move. I got out of Chiang Mai as soon as I graduated, on the very same day. I am not so happy sometimes in Bangkok. I don’t like the place at all,” he says with a melancholic tone in his voice. “Life is so much easier in Chiang Mai. The only thing I really like about Bangkok is that I am making new friends all the time, and these are people with a similar point of view to me. Designers, musicians, those types of people.”

31-year-old Kornkrit’s love of photography was not discovered instantly. “At first I didn’t like photography because I was not so good at the chemical and mathematical side of it, but after time I came to understand the theory of it better, and so I can do what I want to do more now,” he reminisces.

“I discovered photography by doing a project while I was in school. After a project, shooting my friends and real-life situations, I found my first interest in photography. I am also interested in the process of photography in magazines or books. That is my real passion.”

Kornkrit’s first solo exhibition held in July was striking in appearance to say the least. The first impression of the white room on the seventh floor of Chulalongkorn’s Center of Academic Resources was that it was very bleak and unconventional. The photographs were not presented to the audience as one might expect. Towering images were placed on the floor, leaning against the walls. Three projectors were pointed towards three of the walls surfaces, displaying slide shows of enormous, blurry images, with hints of colour that evoke pure intrigue.

A ghostly invisible man dressed all in back could be seen leaning against a tree. The picture was taken from one of Kornkrit’s previous projects, ‘Invisible Man: Leave.’ “The Invisible Man series of photos is about the past. The idea is about a person that doesn’t want to live in the city. He doesn’t know where to go in his life, and when he feels so sad and down he suddenly disappears. So many things happened in my life and made me understand that sometimes things have to change. The invisible man represents parts of me and parts of people around me. It is about people that want to change.”

Before meeting him, one might assume that Kornkrit would be a moody, unsociable, depressed character. In fact, he comes across as quite the opposite. “The concept of the longer set of pictures was that something strange happens in the night. You look to see something, some secret that presents itself to you, and you want to know what it is. It is something from the most simple of scenes that present itself for you to investigate.”

“I enjoy using my photography to tell things about my life and the things that are surrounding me. I am expressing something that I want to tell the world. My pictures are me telling parts of the story of my life. Sometimes I tell about good things, and sometimes about bad things.”

Kornkrit’s exhibition in Chula was aptly named ‘Ghost Story.’ The desolate nature of his photographs and the dim, white room in which they were housed presented emotions relating to the unknown and the mysterious. “I began the project of Ghost Story by looking at my older pictures from other exhibitions,” he explains. “I looked for things that are strange in my past work. This exhibition was about my past, and about things I cannot forget. Like my ex-lover, or a mistake that I may have made, or a bad feeling that I may feel. A feeling I may feel when I walk down the street and it just comes to me.”

Kornkrit’s emotional side is on display for all to see, be it in general conversation or from viewing his photographs.” .

His recent focus on urban landscapes may have come as a result of his father’s death. His views on life shifted somewhat and he began to take in the alienating, haunting images that one might not usually associate with Bangkok. If his work is a reflection of himself, then his thoughts must run deep into dark places. “My inspiration comes from things I see everyday, and also a lot form my fantasies and dreams. Sometimes I just look at an object and I get inspiration from that.”

Not surprisingly, Kornkrit’s taste in music and film reflect something of the nature of his state of mind. “I feel inspired by movies and music. I like a lot of horror and grade-B movies. I enjoyed Silent Hill a lot recently. I love the feeling of a horror movie,” he says. “In terms of music, I don’t like to say that I only listen to one style of music. I can listen to anything and get something from it. I enjoy listening to Nick Cave, and I love The Doors and The Velvet Underground also.”

One noticeable attribute of Kornkrit’s photography is that it defies you not to look deeper into the image and question its meaning. The images are dark, occasionally blurry and their strangeness comes in the menial objects and situations he photographs, transforming them into something new. “My work used to be a lot more blurred that it is now. At the moment I am trying to use a little bit more colour and contrast. In this exhibition I am talking about the night,” he explains.

“In a previous show I looked at how to pass the night, but Ghost Story was another concept entirely,” he continues. “I wanted to say that so many different things happen in the night. I wanted to explore that emotion. The night never promises anything. I wanted to feel the energy that the night gave me. It was interesting for me to shoot at night for a previous exhibition, as I would go into the forest in the night, deeper and deeper, with only a small spotlight. The technique I was using called for a lot of waiting around. It would often take a long time. It was really a scary experience,” he says. “After that, I wanted to compare the feeling of the forest with the feeling of nighttime in the town. I like to experiment with light and the whole theme of darkness.”

Not quite as depressed as his work suggests, Kornkrit beams an innocent, wary smile. “I am quite a happy person at the moment, but sometimes I feel sad in my life. I am at my most happy when I am with my friends or with someone I love. When you move to the city most people don’t think about it so much, but it was hard for me to start something new.”

In the future, Kornkrit says he wants to continue with his projects. He says that he can already feel which elements of his current work are exciting him, and these are the elements that he wants to explore further and develop into new themes. Kornkrit clearly thrives on exploring those emotions that frighten and disturb him the most, which must be a reason why his work feels so emotionally involving.

“I sometimes make money from my work, but sometimes it is not so easy. I also do a lot of commercial work and private work when I can. If I am working on fashion projects then things are good for me,” says Kornkrit. As a photographer Kornkrit is hoping for more commercial, private work for the future.

Techno’ tags: Bangkok, Thailand, Photography