SocialDocumentary.net | Keith Price | Children and the Art of the Eight Limbs

Photographer: Keith Price

Title: Children and the Art of the Eight Limbs

Location: Bang Phli, Thailand

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It was an immense crowd. It took us a few minutes to find the ring that was hidden away past the Buddhist temple and food stands. We follow the cheering and stumble upon an intense scene, hundreds of people crowded around a makeshift open-sided pavilion in the middle of a dirt field with a ring in its center. There were people surrounding the ring in chairs, on bleachers, and standing. There was lots of cheering, yelling, and betting. Hand signals and money passed through the crowd. A traditional music trio was playing the drum and flute for timing of the rounds.

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The photography of Keith Price explores what lies beneath a story by focusing on the compelling nuance of raw human experience and capturing the building up, and release of, energy in the form of gesture and expression. In his ongoing series covering various aspects of the sport of Muay Thai, Keith is striving to expose the physical manifestations of a fighter’s emotional state by using the lens to isolate the subject from the chaotic environment of competitive combat sports.

Muay Thai is the highly brutal and sometimes controversial national sport of Thailand. Muay Thai is often referred to as "The Art of the Eight Limbs", as the hands, shins, elbows, and knees are all used as weapons. In one of the most poverty stricken countries in the world competitive fighting and the money gained from the excessive betting that surrounds it has spawned an estimated sixty-five thousand professional fighters nationally. The relatively large sums of money to be made by prizefighters entices families to send their sons to live at Muay Thai training camps as early as five years old to begin their training as professional fighters. These children train five to six hours a day and by eight or nine years old begin competing in provincial rings throughout Thailand. The images presented in Children and the Art of the Eight Limbs came to fruition during a sponsored trip to Thailand in November 2007 to photograph participants in the Muay Thai World Cup in Bangkok. The unique opportunity to attend a Loy Krathong (River Lantern) festival in Bang Phli brought Keith closer to the problematics of his subject than he had ever been.

Keith Price has been involved with photography since high school, including five years of aerial and surveillance photography for the U.S. Navy. Keith’s work has been recognized by the American Society of Media Photographers, Photo District News “World In Focus” competition and the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize where he was chosen to be included in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London later this year. Keith lives in New York City with his wife Shannon and daughter Oona.

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