2008 Woodie Awards
Thailand in 360 degrees
WEBSTER PHOTOGRAPHER DISPLAYS THAILAND PHOTOS AT FIRST SOLO SHOW
By: Andrea Noble
Issue date: 11/10/05 Section: LifeStyle
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Senior Natalee Cayton, a photography major, returned from a semester in Thailand last spring with the intention to show the tropical South-Asian country has something more to offer than what is on the typical tourist track. The results of her urge to get off the beaten path culminate in the exhibition "Thailand 360," which opened at the 1608 Gallery Nov. 4.
Photos range from massive black-and-white contact sheet exposures of objects or people in 360 degrees to a hazy series of wall peelings in a decrepit building.
"I encourage people to somehow try to get into something beyond the tourism," said Cayton, who had to choose her images from more than 3,000 photos she took over the course of her semester abroad.
"The pictures of the very beautiful scenes, everybody has seen these," Cayton said. "So for me, these aren't what is most interesting."
One particularly intriguing photo is of a captive snake held in the foreground while behind it sits a container of blood. Cayton explained the snake was being drained for a part-blood, part-whiskey shot. This photo was taken in Vietnam.
Other explorative shots were made possible through school field trips. Cayton said she probably wouldn't have had any photos of Buddhist monks had it not been for a weekend-long class trip to a forest monastery with a professor that spoke Thai. Through her professor's translations, Cayton was able to have a monk pose for a frame by frame 360 degree shot, as well as follow some monks on walking meditations. "Alms Walk, Village near Wat Poi," a heavily angular photo of barefoot monks padding down a dirt road, is one in the resulting series.
Senior Nick Diener, an English major, studied at Webster's Thailand campus the same time as Cayton, as did many of the attendees of the "Thailand 360" opening.