from Bunika Snaps Blog





A Place I've Never Been
Fictional BuNiKa in Another Fiction
from BuNiKa Snaps Blog : เอามาจากบล๊อกของบุณิกา
This series of photographs is a collaboration
between Poomkamol Phadungratna and Bunika Chatakul.

Fictional BuNiKa in Another Fiction

A small project which Bunika is making some art works for
a fiction (unfortunately written in Thai) about a photographer, Ploy Karoline Henson.

Main Characters go like this :
As a little girl, Ploy's father was shot dead during Bangkok Military Crackdown in May 1992.
In a photograph, people remember her as a girl holding her dad's bloody sneaker, alone in an
emergency room.

In the States, months after that picture taken, grandma took custody of the little girl,
trying to raise her in normal American middle-class in the Willamette Valley.
Year 2000, as a freshman at the University of Oregon,
Ploy met Joseph Reilly Nakajima, a New Yorker and a retreated war photographer
who spent years in Afghanistan with Ahmad Shah Massoud, a leader of the resistants
fighting the Taliban. We don't know much about Nakajima's early life, and some chapters seem
to be missing. However, he desperately lived every second of peaceful life in this Oregon small
town, running Millrace Studio at the university. At the same time his circle of old college friends
were archaists of Whiteaker (Eugene, Oregon), a group participated in Battle of Seattle in 1999
when WTO conference took place. Another person entering, Priyada became some
kind of a big sister figure for Ploy Henson. Unsuspectingly, Priyada viewed their friendship far
beyond just a friend. Then there was the 911 tragedy, war in Afghanistan, and follow by Iraq War
in 2003, gradually their lives had changed. Things that they wish, things that they are, things
they didn't want, were actually one and the same, unbearable and inevitable.


It's still a work in progress, and has no official title.
"This kinda fun so far.. kinda fictional BuNiKa working on another
fictional characters.. fiction in fiction that look pretty much like a real biography
of someone.. "

also related to this photo
"I made this just for fun.." Bunika says,
"We've gone step further by making an Oregon ID card as a prop.
And Yes !! .. i know i shouldn't put my face on another fictional character, especially a character
in written texts.. kinda forced impression. People won't be able to associate that character with
their own imagination. Then again, i don't really care. i'm taking over the life of Ploy Karoline Henson.

In the story, she had pixie crop hair style, just like BuNiKa. Her name "Ploy" in Thai means
some kind of gemstone but in English.. well you all know what ploy means :)
and that who she really was."

In this photo, we can see her address in early 2000s on her driver license.
This house actually existed on Alder Street between 25th and 26th Ave. at the edge of
Amazon Park neighborhood, mostly a lower middle class area. In 2002, she moved closer
to campus, on Mill Street ..and just in time for Eugene Riot in September of that year
(September 27-28, 2002) in which 1,500 people, mostly college students clashed with
police for no reason.


More detail will be added.
updated August 10, 2011 by BuNiKa Snaps ..
วันหลังค่อยแปลเป็นไทย (ถ้ามีใครต้องการให้แปล)



Comments