Trans Subjects:
① Aida Bua
② Nalin Sataerrujikanon
③ Issy Kachapond
④ Triss
⑤ Min Boonsod
--
Photographed by Mikey Asanin
Styled by Jitta Udomtanasub
Make Up by Benz Semira
Hair by Panithan Summa + Merma
① Aida Bua
② Nalin Sataerrujikanon
③ Issy Kachapond
④ Triss
⑤ Min Boonsod
--
Photographed by Mikey Asanin
Styled by Jitta Udomtanasub
Make Up by Benz Semira
Hair by Panithan Summa + Merma
Nang Ram ‘นางรำ’ is an intimate return to my Thai roots, a meditation on identity, memory, and the ways culture lives through the body.
Photographed in Bangkok, my hometown, the series brings together five transgender women, all of whom are my Thai friends. The title refers to traditional Thai dance, an art form shaped by ritual, discipline, grace, and generations of cultural memory. Within its history are ideas of femininity, beauty, and the body, as well as traditions in which its most revered forms were reserved for women.
I became interested in what happens when trans bodies enter these spaces. Not as disruption, and not as contradiction, but as an extension of the culture itself.
The women in these photographs are not symbols of an identity. They are people who live, work, love, and move through Thai society every day. By placing them within cultural spaces where the body is often carefully constructed, idealized, or controlled, I wanted to make space for another kind of presence. One that is complex, embodied, and unapologetic.
The photographs exist somewhere between intimacy and ceremony. Between the remembered and the lived. They hold a question about who is allowed to belong within cultural memory, and who gets to embody its traditions.
This work is not an exploration of fashion, but of inheritance. It is my attempt to look again at a culture I was born into, and to recognize the richness I had once taken for granted.
Nang Ram is both a return and a reckoning. A way of remembering where I come from, while making room for the bodies, identities, and communities that have always been there.
Photographed in Bangkok, my hometown, the series brings together five transgender women, all of whom are my Thai friends. The title refers to traditional Thai dance, an art form shaped by ritual, discipline, grace, and generations of cultural memory. Within its history are ideas of femininity, beauty, and the body, as well as traditions in which its most revered forms were reserved for women.
I became interested in what happens when trans bodies enter these spaces. Not as disruption, and not as contradiction, but as an extension of the culture itself.
The women in these photographs are not symbols of an identity. They are people who live, work, love, and move through Thai society every day. By placing them within cultural spaces where the body is often carefully constructed, idealized, or controlled, I wanted to make space for another kind of presence. One that is complex, embodied, and unapologetic.
The photographs exist somewhere between intimacy and ceremony. Between the remembered and the lived. They hold a question about who is allowed to belong within cultural memory, and who gets to embody its traditions.
This work is not an exploration of fashion, but of inheritance. It is my attempt to look again at a culture I was born into, and to recognize the richness I had once taken for granted.
Nang Ram is both a return and a reckoning. A way of remembering where I come from, while making room for the bodies, identities, and communities that have always been there.