“All of these images come from just taking the opportunity to travel and experience an incredibly beautiful and seemingly brighter and more alive part of the world”
“Golden Triangle”, the new project and photobook by NYC photographer Eric Chakeen, is a compelling visual diary of his trips around Asia.
Travel has always been at the core of Chakeen’s work. His formative photographic experience was as an intern for Ryan McGinley, during which Chakeen accompanied the photographer on one of his road trips around the USA.
“I found that traveling around the country was an amazing way to stay visually interested and that has informed how I am most creative, by having new visual stimulus and being able to translate that into something personal.”
This dynamic, yet patient approach has remained a tenet of Chakeen’s practice. Even when carefully staged—as with his commercial work—he always retains his intuition, creating a relaxed sensibility that makes one feel as though they are witnessing a casual moment shared between close friends.
“Golden Triangle” was born from a series of trips Chakeen made with his wife while visiting her extended family. Traveling on a scooter, the pair explored parts of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, and made a road trip from south to north Japan and a loop around Okinawa.
There is a sensitivity and patience to the images, typical of Chakeen’s work, though accentuated by the necessitated approach of working with limited film supply and equipment. This forced what he calls ‘a certain type of pragmatic creativity,’ making him “slow down a bit, to take time and be more considerate of the images and composition”.
The places in these images have, for the most part, been well-trodden and documented photographically. However, Chakeen, like great photographers do, has created something that feels fresh and interesting. Blending portraiture with landscapes, quotidian scenes of everyday life, and macro shots of flowers or other small minutiae, Chakeen constructs a beautiful archive of his travels that feels deeply personal.
His understanding of light and tone transforms his images into stunning, painting-like compositions, tinctured in warm analog hues often accentuated by the warm glow of the late afternoon sun, engendering a tactility and conveying an atmosphere palpable to the viewer.
Chakeen describes the imagery as “loose, soft, and intimate” and you would be hard pressed to find a more fitting summary for this collection. It is an approach that embodies his style, but also, photographs almost always reflect the sensibility of the photographer at the time they pressed the shutter, and is perhaps made more potent by the sense of relaxation and freedom one inevitably feels when traveling, something these images beautifully convey.
His trip culminated in March 2020, just as the Covid pandemic was shutting the world down. It was ironic that he would edit and organize the images to create the book during this strange period, yet, though the experience was somewhat surreal, Chakeen says it was also a deeply cathartic one.
“I think it allowed some escape from my little East Village apartment. Having something physical as a document to come out of what felt like a deeply unproductive time felt important to my sanity. Looking back on it now, it feels like a million years ago, and now, I need to make another.”
All images © Eric Chakeen
Golden Triangle the photobook is available via his website.