Lotus Aquarium
An ongoing study of the lower Mekong, where a society is being rebuilt faster than it can be lived in. Wealth arrives unevenly, so that new towers and old neighbourhoods share the same horizon but not the same future, and the sacred, the commercial and the domestic are pressed into one landscape. The title holds two images: the lotus, which rises clean from the mud, and the aquarium, a world sealed off and placed on view. Between them, these photographs look at a place growing polarised and quietly estranged from itself, yet composed, almost serene, in its own reflection.
