Written and Photographed by Gerry Yaum

The more I searched, the more people I found, the more stories that needed to be told. “The People Who Lived Under the Freeway”, is an on-going project. My friends who live under the freeway are the poorest of the poor of the slum. They are forgotten, kind, good-hearted, friendly people. Their stories need to be preserved and I am hopeful the photographs will help them.

Intro

My name is Gerry Yaum, and I’m a Canadian social documentary photographer. “The People Who Live Under the Freeway” is a project that focuses on the lives of a group of Thai people who live under an active freeway in Bangkok’s notorious Klong Toey Slum.

My photography is inspired by the great social documentary photographers, W. Eugene Smith, Lewis Hine, and Sebastiao Salgado. The reason I make photographs is a simple one. I believe that social documentary photography can be a force for positive change in the world. I feel that social documentary photographs can help people in need.

My Other Projects:

-“Body Sellers”, a series of portraits documenting sex workers who service foreign sex tourists in Pattaya, Thailand.
-“Klong Toey Slum”, which tells the stories of some of the people who live in Bangkok’s notorious Klong Toey Slum.
-“Muay Thai Boxer”, about a Muay Thai boxing gym in Klong Toey slum, Bangkok.
-“Families of the Dump”, a longstanding humanitarian project detailing the lives of Burmese refugees who work and live in the Mae Sot Thailand garbage dump.

I would like to note that in 2019 I also shot this work with a digital camera. If you would like to see those photos simply go to my website and search “Klong Toey Slum“.

Gear and Film Stock

The images in this series are made with a Leica M6, Leica R6, Rolleiflex Twin Reflex 2.8 F, and a 5x7 Linhof film camera. The lenses used include 16mm, 21mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 60mm, 80mm, and a 120mm for the 5x7 Linhof camera. My film choice is Kodak Professional Tri-X 400 exposed at 800 ASA and given minutes. STAND development in Rodinal for 1 hour 15 minutes.

Social Cause

The themes behind my images are straight forward. I make photographs that focus on society’s forgotten and ignored people. I try to tell my subject’s story with compassion, empathy, and honesty. Then I use those photographs to raise money, in an effort to help them. It is the perfect circle of creative life. I make the photos, viewers see the photographs in galleries and online, then money/goods are donated to help those in need. Everything is then given directly to the people in the pictures by me. All donations help the people in need. No middlemen or waste. Photos are made, lives are helped, it is as simple as that!

Under the Freeway

My first trip to Thailand was in 1996 and I now can speak conversational Thai. Through the years I have studied Thai culture and their language. “The People Who Live Under the Freeway” is a project dating back to 2012, the year I started to explore and meet people in Klong Toey slum in Bangkok. One day I accidentally came across a man named Anapon who lived in a small dirty room of scrap wood boards under an active freeway. Khun Anapon is a quiet man who smiled shyly at me and was very polite as we spoke. (Khun, meaning Mr or Miss.) Later I found out he was an ex Muay Thai boxer who had traveled internationally. He had lost his ability to box after an injury, then lost his family and eventually resorted to living under the freeway.

Back in 2012 when I first met Khun Anapon, I also met another man named Goh. Khun Goh would wheel himself around under the freeway on a handmade skateboard-like cart which he would kneel upon and push forward with his arms. Along with Goh and Anapon there was a woman who also lived in the area nearby, her name was Ooh. Khun Ooh has mental health issues and a dog she loves and walks daily. At one point in her life, Ooh was married to a Western man who lived in Thailand but they separated and she ended up alone with her dog on the street. She is not sure of her age, she only tells me she is over 40. She often looks around in a frightened and shocked way, especially if there is a loud noise.

Over the next several years I became more and more connected with the lives of my new friends. I would return for a day here and a day there, photographing Anapon, Goh and Ooh. In 2014 I found out that Khun Goh had passed away. I was told by Anapon that one day he just did not wake up in his shack room and the police took his body away and cremated him. He had just disappeared. I think of that story when photographing. Khun Goh now only exists in the pictures I took of him. They are all that is left of him, all that is left to show he was alive. That is part of the beauty and importance of photography, remembering lives. Photography is about photographing the story of people’s lives so that after that person passes, they can be remembered through their image.

These complications inspired me to expand the series, to photograph more people who lived under the freeway, to tell their stories in a bigger way. In 2019 I photographed, Dom 58 a local small-scale drug dealer, Vee 40, and Jack a young man who suffers from substance abuse issues.

The more I searched, the more people I found, the more stories that needed to be told. “The People Who Lived Under the Freeway”, is an on-going project that I will continue when I return to Thailand in 2020. My friends who live under the freeway are the poorest of the poor of the slum. They are forgotten, kind, good-hearted, friendly people. Their stories need to be preserved and I am hopeful the photographs will help them.

Thank you for taking the time to read their stories and view their photographs.

To view all of the film images or to donate to the cause, please visit http://gerryyaum.blogspot.com/2020/01/film-shots-people-who-live-under-freeway.html.

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