Punsiri Sirivetchapun graduated from Silpakorn University and mastered in San Francisco Academy of Arts. He also acts as curator of exhibitions promoting young Thai talented photographers.

Fashion photographer, but not only. His personal work is fed with the question of gender. A very trendy theme these days, except that contrary to others, it is not the feminine-masculine or the 3rd sex theory that interest him, but rather the question of identity that is behind and linked to it.

This is reflected in his work which gives him ground to experiment. This is why and also for ethic a reason, Punsiri has never accepted that fashion designer tell him what to do. Designers and publications he works for have always given him a lot of freedom: "Right from the beginning of my career, I only shot what I wanted to and the way I wanted to. I would rather my style to be hated than just average".

When he speaks about his work and his research on identity, one really gets this impression that Punsiri uses fashion as a means to be experimental, playing with images and impressions we get from them.

Daringly, he mocks traditional criteria attached to fashion photography: use beautiful models so that people want to buy the clothes they wear and give of themselves the same image.  Punsiri does not hand over the ideal aesthetic of fashion models but instead creates characters that are extraordinary, that we cannot relate to because their attribute of identity are contradictory: a young boy wearing trash make-up; a woman dressed like a little girl; an Asian model with black skin, a transsexual dressed like a diva. 

Because nobody can really relate to the models he photographs. Is that why his photographs strike us so much and sometimes disturb us? Hence opening the debate: are our identity classifications valuable? Are they healthy?

Exhibition : 28 May - 29 June at GMT+7 art&design Gallery : 258 Chaussee d'Ixelles, 1050 Brussels

Contact us: gmt7gallery@gmail.com