Bangkok is famous for its temples, its markets, its food and other pleasures. However architectural notice is usually given only to its palatial shopping malls and towers of glass and steel. Reverent attention for architecture from the city’s past is bestowed upon royal palaces and the mansions that had been influenced by European stately homes and housed the kingdom’s aristocracy. It takes real effort to discover the beauty of Bangkok’s old vernacular architecture, threatened as it is by the rapid rate of development that rages through this sprawling metropolis.
Photographer Ben Davies spent decades in Southeast Asia before he became captivated by the abandoned and crumbling buildings from Bangkok’s early history. In 2014, he bought a camera that bordered on the antique, one that used film, many lenses, a tall tripod, and the sort of black cloth that shelters the…
