Dressed in festive costume, a dancer prepares her performance for Thailand's Loi kra thong festivities. Legend has it that during the Sukothai period, the king worshipped the rivers that irrigated the land and helped provide a bountiful food supply. To pay tribute, he invented the kra thong – a vessel made of banana leaves held together with pointed bamboo strips and containing little flowers and a candle – and set it afloat down a river. Since then, on every last full moon of the lunar calendar, people make wishes as they push their small kra thong into the river. Beautifully captured by Ryan Chappell's lens, the dancer seems bathed in moonlight. Chappell prints the photograph on Fujicolor crystal archive paper and mounts it with a mat board passe-partout.
Language: English
