Frank Hallam Day

This book compiles Frank Day's multivalent series of photographs of Bangkok's battered public phone booths. Seen as if magnets for the detritus of daily life in a metropolis, Day's intimate yet subtly epic images register traces of the demands that govern our urban existence: postings for job adverts, signs of commercial pleasure, and listings for entertainment spectacles, or social advancement opportunities. Many of the markings in the booths are tags by graffiti artists and also messages left by street protestors during the recent years of Thailand's political meltdown. Call Waiting is not a sociological document of the type that maps the rich contrasts of a contemporary Asian city. Rather, Day's formalism cultivates intense moods and surprising resonances, touched by a noir sensibility of abandonment, neglect and mystery.
(Brian Curtin)