Verwandte Artikel zu The House of the Raja: Splendour and Desolation in...

The House of the Raja: Splendour and Desolation in Thailand's Deep South - Hardcover

Comas, Xavier

 
9786167339177: The House of the Raja: Splendour and Desolation in Thailand's Deep South

Inhaltsangabe

Forgotten in Thailand’s troubled Deep South, stands a dilapidated wooden palace once home to a Malay ruler, the last of his dynasty. Locals call it the “House of the Raja,” a place suffused with loss and solitude, laden with the region’s glorious past and tragic present. Intrigued by this demonized, little-known borderland, photographer Xavier Comas chanced upon this mysterious house and felt compelled to delve into its past. The caretaker, a Muslim shaman who held rituals inside, invited the author to stay and initiated him into its hidden dimensions. As Comas builds a bond of trust with the inhabitants of the house, the missing pieces of its history gently fall into place, revealing an ancient culture long hidden and the building’s ties to the centuries-old struggles in this contested region. Comas’ evocative black-and-white photographs take us into a realm of hauntings, mystic powers and fading memories. His first-hand account enthralls the reader with vivid descriptions in which the real and the magical entwine. The House of the Raja provides a missing key to controversial issues of legacy, belief and identity in Thailand’s Muslim South.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Xavier Comas, is a fine arts graduate of the University of Barcelona, whose work has been exhibited in Europe and Asia, where he now lives, and featured by prominent magazines such as the Japanese art magazine ‘Quotation,’ the Spanish La Vanguardia Sunday’s Magazine, Courrier International, Asia Literary Review, USA’s Time magazine, Lens Culture, NZZ of Switzerland and GUP Magazine among others. The Singapore Art Museum exhibited his installation ‘Pasajero’ in 2009 and acquired his ‘Jiutamai’ series as a permanent collection. His work ‘Tokyo up, down,’ a random photographic exploration in elevators, was exhibited at Noorderlicht Photofestival 2011 and by the Museum of Estonian Architecture in Tallinn, Estonia. The House of the Raja has been widely exhibited and is his first book both as photographer and writer.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

In deepest Southern Thailand, bordering Malaysia, is the rarely visited province of Narathiwat, home of ongoing conflict between Thailand and Muslim separatists. Once part of the Islamic Sultanate, this area was only integrated into Siam following the Anglo- Siam treaty of 1909. On a photographic expedition for a magazine article, locals led the acclaimed Spanish photographer (now resident in Asia) Xavier Comas to a huge rambling structure that had once been, he was told, the magnificent palace of Tengu Shamsuddin the Raja of Legeh. Now inhabited by a shaman, who invited the photographer to stay, and local characters including an archaeologist, research student and a collector, the magical lost Palace of the Rajah of Legeh slowly revealed herself and seemed to encapsulate the shadows, splendour and desolation of this historic but conflicted region.

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.