I got somewhat close to a lofty ambition of being a movie villain when Thapphawut Parinyapariwat, also known as Sun, the owner of Bangkok’s Red Light Lab & Studio, photographed me with his wet-plate vintage camera.
Since the beginning of the year, Sun has been taking portraits of guests of The Siam Hotel Bangkok, a family-run property that ranks as one of the most unique stays in Thailand’s capital.
“I have been in love with analogue photography since I was in high school,” the 34-year-old photographer remembers, as he shows me around his studio in the heart of Bangkok’s old city.
“I just loved the manual aspect of taking photos, developing the negatives and making prints. I started off shooting daily life at school. After that, I studied Fine Arts at Bangkok University. I had a tiny dark room and photographed the nightlife in downtown Bangkok.”
Sun’s professor recognized the young photographer’s talent and suggested a course of direction.
“My teacher introduced me to wet plate photography,” he says. “Today you can go on YouTube and learn everything there is to learn about the technology, but back then, hardly anyone knew about this process. But I stopped taking photos once I’d finished school and worked as a DJ, organizing underground events and parties.”
The 2014 coup changed everything. Organizing parties became risky under the military government and by 2016, Sun had enough of nightlife and returned to photography. He opened a small wet plate photography studio in Chang Chui Creative Park, a fashionable market and nightlife venue.
“I started collecting vintage equipment,” he says. “Film was making a comeback. I bought stuff everywhere, cameras, enlargers, processors. In Thailand, most analogue equipment was sold for scrap. I also visited wet plate studios in New York, Hong Kong, and Korea. I wanted a bigger dark room, so I could show my clients how these photos are made.”
Sun came across the work of Robert Lenz who ran a photo studio in Singapore in the late 19th century and became a photographer for Thailand’s royal family and aristocracy.
“Back then, even the privileged were photographed only a few times in their lifetimes,” he says. “A family portrait perhaps and a wedding shot. Today, everyone is a photographer. I want people to understand that in the old days, photography was a profession combining arts and science. Those early photographers needed technical knowledge to make the image. I see my work as a kind of time travel.”
Sun started his studio with this heritage in mind. But Lenz’s studio had been a luxury affair, fit to welcome royals and Sun’s studio in Chang Chui was anything but upmarket. During the pandemic, he moved into the erstwhile recording studio of Yellow Fang, a popular Thai band.
“I turned that space into a photo studio,” he says. “I now have an editing room, a big dark room, a space to welcome guests.”
It was only a matter of time until Sun connected to The Siam.
“During the pandemic, I used to go to The Siam and look at their old photos, some of which are very rare,” he says. “Thailand has the biggest archive of plate glass images in Southeast Asia, but the originals are never seen. Even at the National Museum, there are only replicas. At The Siam, I could look at originals.”
Sun felt that The Siam would be an ideal venue to collaborate with his business. He was impressed by the fact that the hotel offered a sak yant experience, the application of a sacred Thai tattoo, which has been very successful—with more than 700 guests inked at the hotel to date.
The Siam’s general manager, Nick Downing was also looking for new experiences for his guests.
“We were searching for something that can only be done in Bangkok,” he says. “One of our regular guests showed me a portrait that Khun Sun had shot. We connected and it turned out he knew Krissada Sukosol Clapp (The Siam’s creative director and owner). When I walked into Red Light Lab & Studio, it felt like an extension of The Siam and I loved how Khun Sun communicated. It was a natural fit.”
Sun agrees: “People who stay at The Siam are looking for something exotic. Vintage photos are like a narrative. First, we thought about opening an atelier in the hotel but then decided to bring guests to my studio.”
Downing was keen to bring his guests to the old town, to experience the dark room.
“If guests are time-pressed, Khun Sun will come to the hotel and shoot them there,” he says. “But really, do you want to buy a photo or be part of the process of the photo? I think it’s better to have the whole experience, not just a memento.”
Sun is an excellent communicator, his collection of vintage cameras is impressive, and the entire process of sitting under lights and watching Sun shoot the image and develop the wet plate is fascinating. He uses an 8 by 10-inch Deardorff camera from the 1960s, originally built for sheet photography, but modified to hold glass plates. The lens is 130 years old. He lights his work with a vintage 6000-watt flash that renders the image incredibly sharp.
Once he has arranged me and my hat to his satisfaction, the negative is produced by coating a clean glass plate with collodion. The plate is then made photosensitive by immersing it in silver nitrate and inserted into the camera. Sun takes the cap off his lens and triggers the flash. The plate is then immediately developed and fixed before the emulsion dries.
As Sun poured the fixer onto the negative, I watched myself materialize as a movie villain within a few seconds. The image has an incredibly crisp quality. And in a mass-produced world, holding that one image of myself in my hands is quite the trip.
“A hundred years ago, when you went to someone’s house, there would be one picture of the family on the wall,” Khun Sun explains, “Today, everyone is on social media, and we learn about each other’s identities on Instagram or Facebook. But something is missing. The picture and the frame. The hard copy.”
I showed my portrait to a friend. She suggested that I look like the heir to Vito Corleone—The Godfather—and a Pennsylvania farmer returning from the war. That’ll do me.