Lao Rocket Festival — Boun Bang Fai Maker
649.00 د.إ
A rocket maker at the Boun Bang Fai festival in southern Laos — his handmade bamboo and gunpowder rocket nearly complete, painted in vivid colours, standing 4 metres tall beside him in his village workshop.
Description
The Boun Bang Fai (Rocket Festival) is one of Laos’s most visually dramatic traditional celebrations — communities compete to build and fire the highest-reaching rockets as an offering to the sky deity Phanya Tan to ensure adequate rains for the rice growing season. The rockets — traditional bamboo tubes packed with gunpowder by hand over weeks of preparation — range from small village-scale rockets to the competition giants of 4 metres or more. This portrait was made in the village workshop of a senior rocket maker in Savannakhet province, the completed competition rocket standing beside its maker at nearly twice his height, its decorative panels of lacquered paper and mirror glass finished in the week before the festival. The workshop’s bamboo wall and the rocket’s vivid red and gold decoration create an intensely coloured portrait environment. Shot at f/2.8 on a 35mm prime in the available workshop light.
