I’m Ekkarat Punyatara, Thai, Photo Editor/Photographer of National Geographic Thailand. In the era that everyone can own their media channel to create or say anything I always want to use my photography to make the society better.
I started my Tourism project with National Geographic Thailand for documenting or questioning if Thailand and our tourism operation has managed well enough in term of conservation management. After ton of researches, ton of photos had been processed, both good and bad perspective, the story got published but a question still remains.
I want to know how it is like when you travel to the country that has lower currency compared to where you are from. Cambodia is one of countries that the currency is lower enough to allows me experiment that.
“Obscurity” is part #2 of my Tourism series. This is the Self-Expression work in Siem Reap, Cambodia, when I was stepping into a tourist’s shoes to travel and document how I was drawn into a steam of illusion as a tourist.
Ekkarat Punyatara, a National Geographic Thailand’s staff photographer based in Bangkok. His photography is inspired by fascination in Thai culture that he was rooted since childhood by his conservative family. He got scholarships from Foundry Workshop(2012) and Angkor Photo Workshop(2013). His first solo exhibition, It’s Personal, got buzzed in Thailand and international from questioning the traditional conservative way of seeing Buddhism in Thailand by documenting a group of Thai monks living in New York. Beside worldwide assignments as an outsider, Ekkarat pursues to portrait the lives of his beloved country as the sight of the insider.
