C A R M A G E D D O N

Sanam Luang. Early 90's

"welcome to Bangkok 1996 - city of ten million people, three million vehicles and an estimated four hundred and fifty new vehicles on the road every day."

" The automobile reigns supreme, devouring all in its path, clogging the city's once serene arteries, substituting the air we breathe for toxic, cancer-inducing gases and dictating the pace of life through auto-fetishists and car-cult junkies, trapped in one-sided love affairs with their BENZine-burning techno-status-symbols and destined to die behind the wheels of their steel-boxed-suitors, vital fluids amalgamating in pools of oily-red liquid-life under violent impromptu street-sculptures of dying screams, crushed metal and RIPped flesh, eerily lit by the flashing red seen-it-all-before roof-top eyes of curb-crawling corpse-collectors' vans-cum-highway-hyenas, grinning radiator grills mocking the efforts of rescue workers as they cut through satiated cabins of twisted metal to reach the dead and the dying. "

Bystanders stare at the dead from behind screens. Bangkok

Pedestrian. Samut Phrakhan.

The burnt remains of a passenger sat in the rear of a taxi when it was rammed by a bus. Bangkok.

South Thailand. Early 90's

Bus Conductor. Kanchanaburi. Early 90's

Su Sarn Wat Don. The bones of unidentified accident victims, exhumed from their shallow graves to make way for more dead. Bangkok early 1990's

Page from 'The Cars That Ate Bangkok' (with Ruam Katanyu Badge)

"Past midnight under flyover, chain-smoking, keep-the-mosquitos-at-bay; 
​Ruam Katanyu pick-up bursts into life and takes off. Jump in the back, cameras smacking and race into light-swallowing fumes.
Minutes later, stand around motorcyclist, face down after misjudging a gap in traffic - No-one does anything. Just stare and smoke cigarettes.
Tell them he's not dead.
"No - Dead already."
Finally convince them to take a look at him so they roll him over like a steak and his chest starts heaving, pumping blood out of his mouth.
"Not dead yet!"
and they bundle him into the back of the pick-up and pull out slowly, expecting him to die soon anyway.
Blood covers the road like some experimental canvas.
It will be gone by day-break, flakes of tell-tale red hiding in the tyre treads of passing motorists' vehicles en-route to their own unchartered rendezvous. "

Motorcyclist. Bangkok Early 90's

Nanglinchee flyover

Thanon Kampaeng Phet 1995

Snap them from a screaming tuktuk, three up riding blind into the midnight monsoon. Bangkok. Asoke if my memory serves.

Cop with spray paint

​L i n k s    T o    R e l a t e d    P a g e s