With Bangkok Beauties, collector, editor, and artist Erik Kessels presents a series of twelve photographs depicting the placidly smiling contestants of a beauty contest that appears to have taken place in Thailand in the early 1960s. Each young woman wears a number pinned to her dress and walks down an aisle flanked with the men and women in the audience. The photographs themselves have become precious in their decay; over the years, they have deteriorated, been scratched, and suffered weather, which has enhanced their beauty both as images and objects. Kessels presents each photograph's front and back side, so the reader can admire the loveliness of youth as well as that of age.
