Muay Thai photography
This is a black-and-white Muay Thai photo essay made across several fight nights at Chiang Mai Boxing Stadium and Kalare Boxing Stadium on Loi Kroh Road.
I was training at Hongthong Muay Thai at the time. Being a fighter changed what I noticed as a photographer: not only punches and kicks, but the nerves before the bell, the money after the fight and the families waiting outside the ropes.
The smell of Thai oil
The smell of Thai oil can put me back in my own fight before I have time to think.
Before I fought, it was simply part of the gym. Afterwards, whenever one of my teammates prepared to fight and that smell reached me, I was back in the minutes before the bell.
I arrived at Hongthong Muay Thai in October 2023 and stayed in Chiang Mai for seven months. Near the end of that stay, I had my first fight.
My opponent had been confirmed, but I did not see him until about 15 minutes before we fought. He was Thai, had around 30 fights behind him and weighed roughly eight kilos less than me. The weight difference made the experience gap fairer. It did nothing for my nerves.
Until the bell rang, it still had not fully registered that it was going to be me and him.
We fought five rounds of three minutes. He won, but we went the full distance. It was gruelling, and unlike anything I had felt from the safety of ringside.
I was proud afterwards. It remains one of the best experiences of my life.
I also knew I never needed to do it again. I am not a natural-born fighter, and the anxiety and uncertainty were enough.
I still love training and technical sparring, preferably controlled and with a smile.
You have to feel it
Ideally, documentary photography begins with understanding what you document.
You cannot read your way into a liver shot. A description does not explain the feeling of your body shutting down, or the smothering clinch of a Thai fighter ten kilos lighter than you.
Training turned that theory into something physical.
The lighter technical session ran from 8 to 10 in the morning. The harder session ran from 4 to 6, with clinching and sparring every day.
I rarely did both. At 36, recovery made the schedule as difficult as the training.
Between sessions, there was food and more food. Some people slept for an hour. I never could.
Every session meant two litres of water with electrolytes.
My fight landed close to Chiang Mai's smoky season, which made outdoor training even less pleasant.
Then I picked up a staph infection. The final two weeks became hard training mixed with antibiotics, and the marks were still visible when I fought.
I always work in black and white.
Here it strips away what I do not need and keeps the eyes, bodies, contact and emotion in front of you.
Around the ring
By then I had attended around 50 Muay Thai events in person. With roughly ten fights on each card, that is about 500 live fights watched from close range.
Repetition teaches you where to look. I stopped watching only the strike and began noticing the breath before it, the shift of weight and the corner preparing to move.
Training sharpened that anticipation. Familiarity mattered even more.
I knew most of the foreign fighters in these photographs. Some were acquaintances, some were teammates and some are still good friends.
My Thai trainers knew me too. When I returned to Hongthong a year later, they welcomed me back with a warmth I still remember.
Young fighters were difficult to photograph, but not for the obvious reason.
The violence itself was not what disturbed me most. It was the crowd around it.
I watched children around ten years old fight while drunk white farangs sat beside bar girls, shouting and treating the evening as entertainment.
I was also a white farang at the stadium with a camera. I cannot write myself out of the scene and pretend I was morally separate from it.
I did not make these photographs to deliver a conclusion. I documented what was there, including the parts that made my own position uncomfortable.
The settings, autofocus and lenses belong in my sports photography guide. This essay stays with the people.
What a fight pays
The banknotes held between the fighters' teeth were prize money.
The two men trained together at Hongthong. They were friends, and I had watched them work in the same gym.
For many of the bouts I watched, the purse was the equivalent of about 50 US dollars. The amount was the same whether the fighter won or lost.
Chiang Mai Boxing Stadium paid somewhat more, especially for a belt fight.
Winning a belt did not necessarily mean taking it home. The winner had to pay to keep the physical belt.
Almost everyone posed for the photograph and handed it back.
Most fighters I knew were barely surviving on what they earned.
Still, I do not want to flatten them into a story about poverty or injury. The friendships, pride and celebration were real too.
A fight can hold damage, money, relief and affection in the same few minutes.
After the bell
The fight does not end when the bell rings.
One of the final sequences shows a boy watching his father fight. Afterwards, the father bends down and comforts him.
A moment earlier he was a fighter in front of a crowd. Now he is a parent taking care of his son's feelings.
The other photographs carry the same aftermath: a doctor treating a cut, friends embracing and an exhausted fighter lying still while everyone else begins to move on.
That habit also runs through my Songkran photo essay from Thailand. I photograph the build-up, the event and what remains after it.
A year after my first stay, I returned to Chiang Mai for another three months. That's also when I started taking my mobility for muay thai seriously.
I trained while editing the lessons for Underexposed. I still had no desire for another fight, but I wanted the rhythm of the gym and the people around it.
The final photograph is quiet. A fighter lies on the canvas with his hands behind his head.
It does not explain Muay Thai, and neither should a single essay.
It records what I found after getting close enough to feel it.
