When Thanphuying Sirikitiya Jensen set out to pare down a trove of 1,000 photographs to just 84 that could illuminate the life and times of her great-great-grandfather, His Majesty King Chulalongkorn (Rama V), one central question guided her: How do you truly see a person when tradition insists they be viewed as something more than human?
Sure, the King appeared in official portraits, resplendent in royal regalia. But growing up between her family home in California and the Grand Palace in Bangkok—whose halls she would race through during vacations— Thanphuying Sirikitiya began to wonder: What kind of man had helped shape the world she was born into?
'Back in the Ayutthaya Kingdom, over 300 years ago, people could not even look at Kings–they were considered avatars of gods,' she said. 'But in these photographs, there are more subtle ways of seeing him, in more intimate settings. The King became more accessible.'
The question of how to see, rather than merely look, lies at the heart of both Glass Plate Negatives: Circles of Centres, the exhibition Thanphuying Sirikitiya curated in Bangkok, as well as a broader effort led by the UNESCO Regional Office in Bangkok to help countries in Asia and the Pacific safeguard their visual memory. In parallel with the exhibition, UNESCO Bangkok is training heritage professionals across the region to care for collections of 19th-century glass plate negatives — a photographic format as fragile as the histories it captures. The first three-day training took place in Hanoi, Viet Nam, from 28 to 30 July 2025.
'Glass plate negatives are fragile but powerful,' said Linh Anh Moreau, Secretary-General of the Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific. 'By working to preserve them, we’re helping future generations see the past more clearly—chronicling an era of human innovation and cultural change in motion, while capturing places, people and culture at a static point in time.'
Used widely from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century, glass plate negatives–images developed on thin sheets of glass coated with light-sensitive chemicals–offered exceptional clarity when compared to other media. But their weight and sensitivity to environmental degradation make them difficult to preserve. In South-East Asia, the format was embraced by both foreign and local photographers. In what was then Siam, the medium flourished under the patronage of King Chulalongkorn, the focus of Thanphuying Sirikitiya’s exhibition, who saw photography as part of his broader modernization agenda.
Today, UNESCO is helping ensure the medium is not consigned to the past.
At the Institute of Social Sciences Information in Hanoi, 14 heritage professionals from four countries filed into a makeshift darkroom in the building’s basement car park to see whether their very first glass plate photograph would come to life. Their attempts to balance 19th-century cameras and shift positions in unpredictable sunlight underscored how painstaking the photographic process once was.
The following day, they peeled apart the treated paper and the glass plate to reveal a group portrait: evidence of the fragility of the medium. Throughout the training, participants practiced identifying and cleaning signs of degradation, printing salt paper positives from negatives, and learning how these delicate materials might one day support the restoration of ancient cultural sites and expressions.
Among the Vietnamese participants was Nguy?n Thanh Trang, Deputy Head of the Audience and Document Preservation Department at the institute, who manages more than 22,000 glass plate negatives, many of them untouched since the colonial era. 'This was by far the most exciting and meaningful training I’ve ever attended,' she said. 'Before, we just stored them carefully. Now, I can actually diagnose what’s happening to them, minimize risks from the environment, and act [accordingly].'
For Phan Thi Thu Huyen, from the Scientific Management and International Cooperation Section, Institute of Social Sciences Information, the training filled a long-standing institutional gap. 'We hold the largest collection of glass plate negatives in all of former Indochina, yet they haven’t been comprehensively and thoroughly assessed in terms of deterioration and specific research values,' she said. 'This training has given us a roadmap to assess their current condition, categorize them, restore and digitize them, and finally, make them accessible to the public. This collection serves not only to preserve historical imagery but also to embody a visual heritage that spans ethnography, culture, archaeology, history, and arts.'
Many of the images featured in Glass Plate Negatives: Circles of Centres come from the The Royal Photographic Glass Plate Negatives and Original Prints Collection, inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2017. Captured more than a century ago, they document royal journeys, daily life, and a nation navigating profound change.
At a press conference to launch the exhibit, Mr Phanombut Chantarachot, Director-General of Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, noted that it was no easy task for a monarch to journey to remote and rugged parts of the kingdom. 'Yet, every step he took brought hope and well-being to his people. Each photograph featured in this exhibition is imbued with that royal compassion, stretching from the north to the south, east to west, even to distant lands abroad.'
In compiling the show, Thanphuying Sirikitiya says she was influenced by French philosopher Roland Barthes, particularly his reflections on a single photograph of his mother in Camera Lucida. Barthes never reproduces the image but writes that it revealed her essence in a way no other photo ever had. It wasn’t about historical documentation, but emotional recognition. 'I was looking not just for images of the king in state, but for new ways to see him.' Like Barthes, she was drawn to images with punctum–an unexpected, piercing detail that collapses the distance between subject and viewer.
One image shows King Chulalongkorn and his entourage picnicking on a forested riverbank during an incognito trip to central Thailand. The King wears a Panama hat, his eyes are gazing downwards, deep in thought, as others around him eat. Another captures a ritual anointing with three varieties of holy water. In a third, an artist’s fingerprint is pressed into the emulsion, a ghostly trace Thanphuying Sirikitiya calls 'an echo, a residue of history.'
At the time these photographs were taken, Siam was navigating a shifting geopolitical landscape. In this context, the spiritual geometries known as mandalas — systems that placed the monarch at the symbolic center of power – were evolving. Many of the photographs show King Chulalongkorn crisscrossing his kingdom, following a doctor’s advice that travel might ease his stress, and visiting neighboring lands, including Borobudur Temple, now a UNESCO World Heritage site in Indonesia.
'He left the mandala,' Thanphuying Sirikitiya said, 'because he needed people to see him.'
Images from the Fine Arts Department may not be used or reproduced without the prior permission of the copyright holders.
