Tikkiwallah in Chiang Mai

Aaron Joel SantosLeave a comment

My friend Rachna lives and works on one of the most beautiful pieces of land in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. It’s a lush, sprawling garden complex with several structures built over the years by the property’s owner. Plumeria, palms, and teak trees dot the yard, with staghorn ferns and orchids hanging from their branches, while vines and ivies creep along walls and garden floors throughout. It’s one of my favorite places in Thailand, and where I stay every time we work together.

Earlier this year, we spent a week at the complex, taking photographs for Rachna’s new Tikkiwallah collections. Similar to the work we did last year. A bit more focused this time around. We Stayed closer to home and worked with other friends in the north. It was quiet and relaxing. A perfect place and time.

It’s hard not to be impressed by the women Rachna works with. They’re talented and driven and manage to hold to many of their traditional arts while navigating the modern world. It doesn’t escape me, how lucky I’ve been in this life to experience the things I’ve experienced, to have met all of the wonderful people I’ve met over the years. I think about it often. My many great friends, and the many great things they do, in their work and in their communities. That’s all. For now.

Time in New Zealand

Aaron Joel Santos2 Comments

I’ve tried to write this post for a few days now, but I’m not sure exactly what I want to say.

When you spend too much time away from a thing, it can be difficult coming back to it. You start to overthink it. You begin to wonder why you ever did the thing at all, or why you even want to do it again. You can paralyze yourself with worry and doubt.

I’ve kept this blog for well over a decade, but I don’t post nearly as often as I used to. Things change. At some point, I got bored with my photographs, and with whatever I had to say about them. I began to feel like just another voice, clamoring to be heard over all the noise. I prefer the quiet.

I still take a lot of photographs, I’m just a bit quieter about them. I’m trying to do things differently when I can, experimenting and taking more risks, but it doesn’t come as easily as it used to. There’s something to be said for youthful abandon and misplaced confidence. It’s more difficult to posture when you’re more aware of your shortcomings.

I spend a lot of time thinking about art and photography and what it means to have your own voice in a thing, and how that voice can change over time. How it becomes weathered and more comfortable with itself, but also, for me, how that comfort has inversely affected how much I want to talk about my work.

In the simplest terms, I’ve tried to be a sponge, to soak up beauty and to put that beauty back out there in whatever small and unique way I can. And maybe I don’t need to talk about anything more than that. Maybe that’s the post.

So here are a few pictures I think are beautiful and that showcase a bit of beauty in the world, from the north and south islands of New Zealand, and one or two from Australia, while I was skipping through. Let’s not make too much of it.

Tikkiwallah | Thailand & Laos

Aaron Joel Santos4 Comments

Last month, I traveled to Thailand and Laos to photograph artisans and weavers, and the textile-making process, for a dear friend’s brand, Tikkiwallah.

We traveled from Chiang Mai to Mae Sa, and from Luang Prabang to Oudomxay and beyond, visiting small villages and meeting the men and women who create these amazing fabrics, designs, and products. We slept on floors, rode on trains, ate river bugs, and got to witness some incredible craftspeople at work.

Here are a few images from the trip. I’m looking forward to the next one.

Diary 01 | Ways of Seeing

Aaron Joel Santos4 Comments

It’s been a strange few years. Since the start of 2020, I’ve lived in Charlottesville, Bangkok, Sydney, and New York. Three continents in as many years. Then, in March, I moved back home to New Orleans. I’ve felt uprooted and unbalanced for a while now, but things are starting to settle in. I’m starting to settle in.

I mention all of this because I think my photography has suffered for it. I’ve been preoccupied and distracted and I’ve lacked focus. I’ve been lazy as well, and I’ve used the past few years as an excuse for that laziness. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut. It’s much more difficult to dig your way out of it.

So I’ve been trying to change the way I see things, to relearn some things about seeing, and to recapture some of the wonder I felt when I first picked up a camera. I’ve been photographing clichés. Reflections in puddles. Landscapes out of plane windows. Temples and riots of wires above old shophouses.

As artists, we’re often told to kill our darlings, to not fall in love with a thing because of our experience with it. But I’ve always found those platitudes disingenuous. All art is personal. Some clichés are really beautiful. Show what you love and hope that it resonates with even one person.

I didn’t set out to make these photographs anything more than what they are–a document of the past nine months. I tried to pay particular attention to things I would normally walk past. I tried to point the camera at anything even remotely interesting. I tried to see in layers and to simultaneously embrace the obvious and move past it. I took a lot of bad and boring photographs. I love them all.

There’s no narrative here, no through line or connecting thread. Just a small collection of small pictures. Personal, but also maybe more than that.