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PORTRAITS
FROM PATPONG Located
at the center of the vast and sprawling metropolis known as Bangkok, the
notorious district known as Patpong is only a couple of
rundown blocks, strewn with garbage and stray dogs, filled with stalls
selling tawdry counterfeit goods, a sleazy row of go-go bars staffed by a few
thousand girls who didn’t make it into the hi-end of the Bangkok Night and a
thousand or so ladyboys wacked out on drugs, hormone injections and too much
silicone. The
millions of tourists who each year wonder through Patpong and make it all
possible come from all over the world. Not
exactly shining examples of First World bliss, they are often grotesquely
overweight, dressed in a shabby assortment of sweat stained t-shirts, shorts and
flip-flops, and weighted down with knapsacks, cameras and shopping bags filled
with worthless knick knacks. Many of
them are drunk and jetlagged, their faces showing the pain of unfulfilled and
despairing lives. What
these First World Ambassadors are looking for in the primordial mire of Patpong
is an indecipherable mystery, even to themselves.
As
for the Thais, Patpong’s simply a place to work and make money.
No matter how strange and shoddy the endless river of foreign tourists
may look, by some set of circumstances very few Thais comprehend, these
primitive beings are usually loaded with cash and happy to spend it on items
which appear to be completely unnecessary. Counterfeit
watches that last only a few months, girls who don’t actually want to have
sex, ladyboys who are not even girls but do want to have sex and an endless
stream of beer that will pass through their bloated bodies in less than an hour. At some point, the Patpong District will be torn down to make way for gleaming hi-rise offices and whatever Patpong is presently thought to be or actually was will gradually recede into the realm of mythic recollection, a moment in time between Bangkok’s murky Third World past and its bright First World future. Perhaps one day, the portraits in this book will be all that’s left………. There are approximately one
hundred paintings in the PORTRAITS FROM PATPONG series. To view a music video of the PORTRAITS FROM PATPONG paintings, click here. Copyright © 2005, 2006 by Chris Coles
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