Meet our July artist-in-residence, Bangkok-based American photographer Ben Robinson.
Born in Dillsboro, a rural town in southern Indiana (USA), Ben studied photography at Indiana University and received his BFA, along with a minor in Art History, in 2016. He currently lives and works as an art teacher in Bangkok, Thailand.
His artwork deals with a wide variety of concepts through an honest and personal lens, and he strives to raise important social and cultural questions. He enjoys combining photography and other mediums and his work often pushes the boundaries of art and photography, using traditional methods in non-traditional ways.
Ben is inspired by the simplicity of working with his hands and completing repetitive mundane tasks which allows him to tap into a meditative state for creating, and he finds this particularly relevant in an increasingly digital age and with the dawn of AI technologies looming.
Ben would like to use the residency as an opportunity to connect with the Thai people, culture and landscape that has had such a profound impact on him. In particular, he plans to collaborate with local craftspeople and artisans regarding their techniques, processes and traditions in creating handmade paper, fabrics, dyes, pigments used in Thai arts. Using his photography and mixed media, he would use natural materials and found objects from the grounds and surrounding areas to recreate the photos as cyanotype photograms.
Everything Ben uses would come from the province: handmade paper or fabric, plants, rice, dirt and rocks (perhaps even litter). Even using the Thai sunlight to expose and water from a stream to develop the cyanotype. He is also interested in experimenting with the Thai craft he learned in combination with the cyanotypes. Through such an immersive process, he hopes to capture the beautiful Thai artistic traditions and its practitioners, highlighting the possibility of life beyond the digital world while also connecting viewers to the spirituality of the land.
Take look at Ben’s work here.
Studio 88 Artist Residency 