Bangkok Beauties

Beauty captures the eye as well as the imagination. There is something naturally alluring and distracting about loveliness; something in its purity, its naivete, its promise and its hopeful inspiration. We all tend to gravitate with passion towards the ideal. In Bangkok Beauties, Erik Kessels provides a look at a specific photographic series that depicts attractive women during a beauty contest sometime ago. Here we see the contestants displaying themselves in such a way as to be judged by their poise, their posture and their most of all by their appearance. The photographs have become even more precious and lovely in their decay. Over the years, the pictures have deteriorated, been scratched and suffered weather all of which serves to enhance their beauty both as images and as objects. In fact, we can hold these rescued beauties and see them front and back thereby join in the admiring contest that continues even still. Black & white, 170 x 225 mm, 28 pages, soft cover.