To all those who don't know me my name is Andrey Belopopsky.

I was born in London, UK several moons ago. I make photographs as often as possible and that makes me very happy and blessed. Asleep in Siam will be the first long Photo Documentary project I am attempting. It has grown out of my experiences living, loving and thriving in SE Asia.

I studied art and photography and worked in the industry for some time as a technician, printer and later as a production manager in the UK and USA. I also took commissions for photographic work including portraits, travel, advertising and communications projects in France, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal and Guinea.

Asleep in Siam arose from the history of my local airport, U-Tapao, and it's origins in the Vietnam War. The story starts on abandoned runways in Isaan Province and leads to the city of Pattaya at it's end, a new Babylon to satiate modern human desire. I immediately became aware of the transformation of the South East Asian region whilst travelling, through the clash of old culture, politics and imported ideologies, through the transformation of the landscape and the disarray left in it's wake, and through the modern economic trends that sidle alongside the older cultural and religious subtexts that still dominate.

My work aims to create a core political document levered from environments of domesticity, the roadside construct, the human pose, artifacts covered by time and place, the new machines, the landscape as history, the human as economic product.

I became very drawn to the visual environment as it coalesces under the stark sunlight and diminishes into the shadowed and subdued color of night under fluorescence and tungsten.

It was the story of the people in this history, and how the people today live under that yoke of history still, particularly those who exchange their flesh for economic gain in the sex industry in Pattaya, and how the landscape remains witness to the economic globalization and the financialization of more and more human activities.

I discovered a dislocation in the portrayal of these activities in this region, which are usually media-centrist imagery designed to fascinate the prospective visitor and not reflective of the human scale that polarizes economic activity.

Asleep in Siam will attempt to reveal the grandeur of the under-observed and the fantastically possible. I am deeply committed to undertaking this work, with a view to bringing it under a larger work about the transformation of Asia. It will take over a year to produce and your help in this endeavor is utterly invaluable.

“The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.”
Alberto Giacometti

“Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” Marc Chagall

My project Asleep in Siam is concerned primarily with thelong-term impact of war on a region and population. In my opinion it is compelling for a creative work to bring history into new perspectives which can allow human progress to improve and alleviate future suffering.

During the Vietnam War U-Tapao Airport, located on the Gulf of Thailand east of the city of Pattaya, was a front-line military base used by the United States to stage bombing runs into Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Both the USA and Thailand benefited politically from this arrangement, however the lasting affect of this exchange remains today.

This era gave rise to numerous cultural changes, bringing consequences that impact the country greatly still, with many seen as negative by the local populations: increased prostitution, the expanded drug trade, crime and the erosion of traditional Thai values have all been blamed on the US military during its stay.

Pattaya was a small fishing village until the 1960’s when, during the Vietnam War American servicemen stationed at U-Tapao and other bases began visiting the area for their periods of R&R (rest and relaxation). It was during this period that the sex industry in Pattaya grew into what is now arguably one of the most frequently visited destinations in the world for sex tourism, where the connected problems of human trafficking, AIDS, and poverty continue to flourish and claim lives at unprecedented rates.

I have undertaken other photo documentaries in art school and afterwards, usually based on the landscape and artifact. I have traveled and photographed throughout SE Asia, North and West Africa, and this will be my first long project in this region.

Risks naturally occur when we create and use our minds to challenge life and push at our boundaries.

The main risk to this project is insufficient funding. If that be the case then I foresee a simple extension of the time-frame to completion. I have already done a year of research and have traveled the routes of my story. Living here I am very familiar with the region and people where most of the story takes place so production ought not to be hampered significantly, just prolonged. I will do my best to remain living during my travels and bring this work to it's end!

To tackle this project requires a willingness to surmount obstacles and use a positive attitude of mind to advance. I have these sentiments in abundance, so I am confident that whatever the outcome I will produce a body of work nevertheless. The army taught me "slow is smooth, smooth is fast": with the right mindset all obstacles can be navigated.

Some people just can't contribute, but that doesn't mean you can't help: just reading this and believing in the project helps me tremendously, especially if you can share it among your own networks.

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