Photography exhibition by Japanese skater, Ryo Ogawa, 3 February – 17 March 2018, at Jam Cafe.
As Bangkok city slowly phases out bus conductors, this show serves as a documentation of this city’s current buses and its people.
ve·hi·cle
(noun)
1. a thing used for transporting people or goods, especially on land, such as a car, truck, or cart.
2. a thing used to express, embody, or fulfill something.
YAN PHAHANA
Ryo Ogawa examines the working buses of Bangkok, the individuals who depend on them those who operate them. This aging and unglamourous transportation infrastructure and the workers who run it are responsible for carrying everyday people around Bangkok, an often overlooked aspect of Thai life.
1st October 2017 BMTA (Bangkok Mass Transit Authority) announced they will install a new e-ticket system on all their buses over the next 2 years putting into ‘early retirement’ about 2,000 bus conductors.
For me riding the bus has always given me an authentic feel of the local culture of Bangkok. In the coming few years Bangkok is making a slow effort to update the busses and ticketing methods to newer and shinier systems. My goal with this project was to document what I found interesting about this current system before the classic Bangkok bus system as we know it disappears forever.
—Ryo Ogawa
RYO OGAWA
Born and raised in Nagoya, Japan, Ryo is a young photographer living in Bangkok. After coming to Thailand to learn English, he fell in love with the city and its people. Currently working for as a videographer for Thai skateboarding company Preduce, he walks in the city with his skateboard and shoots daily life. Making photography and video is his way to share his vision of this world. Ryo’s work reminds people what they forgot, to inspect what is around them with a curious eye.
