The Photography of Dr. Jeffrey P. Harper

My friend and photography teacher, Basil, and his wife left Bangkok at 5:15am to reach the salt pans of Samut Songkhram at sunrise to take photos under the magical light of morning. We arrived at 6:30am to a driving tropical thunder and lightning storm. We bided our time taking photos of whatever was lit enough to shoot, like this frangipani flower . . .

. . . or this wet red morning flower.

The rain finally gave way to moody morning light reflected in the salt pans.  Beautiful.

As the sunrise broke through the clouds a light shade of peach started to permeate the landscape.  We got in my truck and raced down the road to see if there might be some salt harvesting between the storms.

Indeed!  There was to be salt harvesting to be done . . . . interrupted by the rain.

We were in luck: there were cones of salt ready for porterage sitting in the light rain under the peachy morning light.

The light did not last long . . . but my-oh-my!

As we walked around the sunrise salt pan we noticed a dilapidated bamboo salt shed and went in for a look.

A soft, light rain fell on us as we stood transfixed within the beautiful mood invoked by the patterns and the light.

Why is dilapidation, a returning back to elemental substances, so beautiful?

 Extraordinary textures.

The dampness of the morning rain and the soft light made the colors jump into your eye wherever you looked.

Basil was in Photographers' Heaven!

Cones of salt dissolving in the rain.

There had been terrible erosion of the salt cones in the rain.  We spoke to one of the pan workers who said that 50% of the harvest had been lost because of the early rains.  This is suppose to be the hot and dry season, not the rainy season.

We came back later in the morning and watched the salt laborers carry the salt out of the pans.

Scooping heavy wet salt is hard labor.

This crew worked very fast; perhaps they feared a resumption of the erosive rain.

The salt pan laborers ranged from the very old . . .

. . . to teenagers . . .

. . . all in a rush to stack (and cover) the newly harvested salt.

It didn't take long for this crew to empty the pan of its salt stacks.

We drove around on the small roads between the saalt pans and came upon a salt barge being unloded.

Hard physical labor in the stiffling heat and humidity.

A timeless scene under a cloudy sky.

We drove around on the farm roads between the salt pans and found an old Wat that was in the middle of a big building project . . . and I do mean BIG.

The building project involved putting the oldest wooden Wat on wheels and moving it to a new location.

The mundane and the spiritual exist side-by-side in the Wat.

Bangkok is a great city in which to live in its own right, but literally an hour from the great city are many marvels of rural life.

The old wooden Wat seemed very fragile; I did not go up the ladder to take a look, but Basil did.

Where the monks live.

The accidental aesthetics of the Wat is always surprising.

Although it is a place where the residents do not tend to the physical world, they make a beautiful place . . . perhaps because of it.

I love the textures of old spaces.

The deities that had been housed in the old wooden Wat had been removed, awaiting their placement in the new Wat under construction nearby.

Vestiges of earlier historical influences could be seen in much of the statuary, which were from the Hindu pantheon.

At the back of the Wat, in a stand of pine trees, there appeared a collection of very, very old Buddha statues.

The Buddhas were covered in a deep layer of pine needles. They looked as if they were emerging from beneath the ground.

Some of these Buddhas looked ancient.

Other Buddhas still showed remnants of their original coloration and adornment.

I could not tell if this collection of Buddhas were abandoned to this part of the Wat, were placed here in temporary storage awaiting the completion of the new Wat structure, or were intended to keep watch over the forest and the chedis that held the ashes of former monks and abbots interned nearby.

The forest chedis watched over by the ancient Buddha images.

The old chedis still revealed their carved Buddha embellishments.

Nearby, next to a stand of bamboo stood a large collection of spirit houses.

The tropical pole pine needles coated the spirit houses as well.

The pine needles, the stand of wispy trees and the golden spirit houses created a strange mood in the misty morning light.

Some spirit houses can be quite whimsical with their family of "inhabitants."

In the middle of the grove of spirit houses were the remnants of a blessing ceremony on a white table covered with pine needles.

The untended spaces of the Thai Wats allow for a stunning beauty to occur.

The monks at this Wat had a marvelous aesthetic sensibility . . . 

. . . and a wacky architectural sense of humor! YOU tell me what's going on here!

We had had a wonderful day of discovery and wonder . . . and photography.  As we drove home we noticed another crew of salt pan laborers clearing a pan in the distance, so, of course, we drove up a muddy road to take a look . . . .

. . . and more photos of this visually interesting process.

This second crew also worked at breakneck speed, and had the pan nearly cleared during the time we watched them.

It was a memorable day.

I woke up at 5:00am this morning to go down to the Central World Mall where an annual gathering of 20,600 monks meditate and pray. An amazing sight.

That's a lot of monks right there in the middle of the street.

Monk patterns.

Old monks, young monks . . . all kinds of monks.

A few sleepy monks among the gathered throng(?) . . . what is the unit term for a gathering of monks? Covey? Tribe?  Gaggle?

I took a million photos of the monks . . . I was totally engrossed with the visual imagery and the spiritual power of the occasion.

It was fantastic to see the part of the city where I go all the time with my wife suddenly be completely full of Buddhist monks.

The Abbots from the many Wats (Buddhist temples) filled the front rows.

An advertisement for what one might do with one's consciousness while "out of the blue and into the black."

One can overlay many layers of meaning onto this gathering of monks. The story I like is that this is a drawing of the spiritual battle lines between a personal and private project to obtain a clear and unattached consciousness versus the crazy desire to have ever more material objects as a symbol of the delusion of meaningfulness.

I cannot imagine a better part of town to throw down a karmic antidote.

Not everyone is driven by obsessive material attachment: there were many, many pilgrims present to give alms.

The devotees left many donations to defray the cost of today's big ceremony. 

The 20,600 monks faced the 100,00+ devotees, here to give alms.

The occasion is not just a gathering of monks, it is also an opportunity to give the traditional morning alms to the monks, but this time in mass.

Families had come very early in the morning to find a place in the alms lines.

Monks walking among the gathered followers . . . a beautiful sight.

After the morning chant, the monks proceed down the stripped walk to receive alms from the gathered devotees.

The monks eventually take their place in front of a family who offers food, candles, and incense.

The monks marched down one side to the end, then cam back to other side . . . in a fantastic movement of crisscrossing orange among white.

Serious, austere monks among the alms givers.

The monks walked under the pedestrian bridge I was on and then down the street where thousands more alms givers waited.

The city center had been made over in white, red and orange.  Great spirit.

There were monks everywhere in the side streets and in front of the buildings that surrounded the main ceremony.

It was a photographers dream . . . . I could not resist these reflected monks!

Reflected monks were  Everywhere!

An old monk taking care of business in the red chairs.

When the last alms had been given, the gathered crowd participated in picking up the cloths and ceremonial accouterments.

Everyone pitched in to clear the streets.

While the road was being cleared, monks and pilgrims mingled on the street.

This kind old monk gave me an Buddhist amulet.

The alms were bagged and trucked to various Buddhist temples, there was more than each monk could carry.

I met several big time professional photographers while taking photos on the pedestrian bridge; this is Tony B from New York City.  The event attracted photographers from all over the world.

One of the really cool things you can do in Bangkok is to have an old car restored -- cheaply.  If you happen to have an "overseas contract" with a corporation or embassy you may also have the benefit of shipping your car over to Thailand, and shipping it back at the end of the contract.

If the car you ship to Thailand happens to be a rusty old classic 1965 Mustang convertible, and the car you ship back is the same car but fully restored, so much the better.

I really like my friend's Mustang restoration.  He used the straight six cylinder engine and four-speed manual transmission, but with a racing cylinder head and Paxton supercharger.  Very nice.

A big valve, large port, aluminum racing head with a matching camshaft for the supercharger.  The supercharger and 4-bbl fuel injector throttle body were removed for shipping -- a one-barrel carburetor was rigged to get the Mustang in and out of it's container. What you can't see are the hand-fabricated stainless steel headers and duel exhausts.  Nice work.

The interior is all new as well.  Various patch panels were butt-welded in here and there.  Very good work.

New chrome bumpers and trim items, along with a new vinyl convertible top finish the rebuild.