Beyond the Frame 46/
Part One of a ghostly photo essay and an invitation to take a Ten Minute Challenge.
Phi Ta Khon (Part 1)
Even when you know you’re going to photograph a festival called “Ghosts in Masks (Phi Ta Khon), the first time you see a masked ghost casually walking down a busy street prompts a double-take.
In the small town of Dan Sai, in Thailand’s northern Loei province, spirits walk among the living and the line between reality and imagination is blurred in the tropical heat. Phi Ta Khon is a part of the annual Boon Luang merit-making festival, where animist and Buddhist traditions overlap in a fever dream of music, masks and myths.
Phi Ta Khon masks are ornately decorated palm leaf sheaths and coconut tree husks topped with painted rice steaming baskets. Material fragments are sewn together for a costume, with bells or cans attached for maximum noise. Phi Ta Khon participants carry a wooden weapon, many of which are adorned with an unambiguously phallic appendage.
Masks are individually decorated. Some are precisely painted, others are more rudimentarily abstract, which makes them all the scarier.
Teams often collaborate on their designs and travel from surrounding towns and villages for the three-day festival.
Behind the masks, the faces are much friendlier. Despite first appearances, the festival is a merry event with much singing and dancing fuelled by giant barrels of Singha beer and bottles of home-brewed Lao Khao, a rice whiskey from neighbouring Laos.
The roots of the festival lie in an ancient tale from Buddhist folklore. When Prince Vessantara (a previous incarnation of the Buddha) returned to his kingdom after a period of exile, his people were so overjoyed that their celebrations were said to have raised the dead. Today, the festival’s name reflects that legend—’Phi’ means ghost, and ‘Ta Khon’ loosely translates to ‘mask’. But the event is more than just a reenactment; it is a deep-seated ritual, a bridge between the seen and unseen worlds.
The festival begins with the summoning of spirits. Villagers perform ceremonies at the local Wat Phon Chai temple, invoking protective deities and seeking blessings for the town’s prosperity. Then, the real spectacle begins. Drums pound, cymbals crash, and an unruly procession of masked dancers floods the streets.
Phi Ta Khon participants might be tall or small—the smallest ghosts are often the most enthusiastic in their pursuit of fearful victims. Some appear in the form of demons with pin-sharp teeth and lolling tongues—but they’re also excellent dancers.
In a small wooden hut down a side street, Phi Ta Khon mask makers work day and night, preparing masks with traditional designs.
Emerging from the river bank and the fertile earth of the rice fields come the Mud Men, dancing through the streets to the rhythm of their bamboo stakes.
From dawn to dusk and well beyond, the energy in the streets is almost relentless as masked figures leap and spin, taunting onlookers, their bells and bamboo clappers adding to the cacophony.
Yet, amidst the revelry, there is an underlying spirituality. The festival is not just about play; it is also about cleansing, renewal, and the Buddhist cycle of merit-making. After the wild parade, the celebrations give way to the Bun Bang Fai—a rocket festival invoking the rains—and solemn sermons at the temple, reminding all that karma is ever-turning
This is Part One of two. I’ll share more from Phi Ta Khon soon, including photos of the Phi Ta Khon Yai, an oversized male and female couple twice the height of a person who symbolise fertility in a way that could not be described as subtle!
Ten Minute Challenge
And now for something completely different.
If, like me, you find your attention span has been shrinking, the New York Times has an antidote.
On the first Monday of each month, they are publishing a work of art and inviting readers to spend ten uninterrupted minutes looking closely at it.
This month’s artwork is Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photograph of a “Man Leaping”.
Views can zoom in and inspect details and I found that ten minutes passed very quickly once I began to see things in the image that I’d not noticed before. It must be one of the most well-known photographs ever published and I’ve looked at it countless times. I say “looked at it” but I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever devoted enough time to properly see it.
At the end of ten minutes, an expert description of Cartier-Bresson’s famous photograph is revealed, which puts the image into historical context.
If you try the Ten Minute Challenge, let me know how you found it. Did you see anything new? Did you succeed in devoting ten full minutes to it?
It’s an interesting experiment and reminds me of Granny saying, “More haste, less speed.”
Granny had many sayings. That’s one of the few that’s publishable.
Until next time, go well.
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