OLIVER VACCARO
Creative Photography
Coney Island, Brooklyn, N.Y USA
The Coney Island amusement park is closed for the winter. The artificial heart activated by the gigantic "Wonder Wheel" has stopped. It gives way to emptiness and silence. Only the local population continues its daily activity.
Passing through it, a particular atmosphere emerges. I feel under its influence, maintained by the illusion of the game where an urban environment is visible. The physical boundaries seem to have joined those of the mind and it is difficult for me to distinguish the inhabitants of this environment.
Ko Bulon Don
A small Island in the Adaman Sea, a village of Chao Leh People. Here their village is the only existing community, not fully reached by the outside world of modern thai life or tourism.
NOMADS NO MORE
Forced to stay in one place for years now, the sea gypsies are no longer nomads, but still live in a strong connection to the sea and their occupations is usually fishing. At the same time they live in between worlds, their own traditions start to fade, it seems the outside world doesn't give room for preserving their traditions. Their aim for a better life goes along with the need to assimilate to thai culture and language.
Lumpini Stadium, Bangkok, Tuesday Night
Muay Thai means celebrating the fight, the rules, the competition. It is
entertainment and tradition at the same time. The ritual of the fight has its own rhythm.
Two fighters enter the ring and perform their own muay thai sacred dance, the wai khru ram muay, to show respect to their mentors and trainers. They are wearing armbands blessed by monks, headbands, the Mongkol, and capes. In five rounds the oponents fight for winning.
Around the ring the audience is making bets, trainers are shouting to support their fighters. In the background more fighters are warming up, others are taking their breath after their fight, taking care of their hands and wounds.
The bell is ring, the ritual starts again.
PARADISE III
The particular iconography that defines Cuba relies on the omnipresence of rich colours. I have endeavoured to stay as close to reality as possible in reproducing those, without manipulations, while letting them create a link between all the places I have made pictures of. The choice of colour photo also emphases the current character of my pictures – whereas using black and white might have had the effect of creating some confusion as to their place in time, or of giving them an irrelevant romantic character.
When in Cuba, one is doubly met with the notion of a border, of a distinction between the inside and the outside: in a literal sense, since it is after all an island, and in a more figurative sense in view of its political history
