Battle for Bangkok

• Prize
• Photographer
  Benjamin Haselberger, Thailand
• Date of Photograph
  online
• Socials
• Website
  http://benjaminhaselberger.com

In Spring 2010 a battle of wills raged between the Thai government and tens of thousands of protesters barricaded in the streets of Bangkok. Since a military coup in 2006 it has been not a peaceful, harmonious country that the world has seen but rather one riven by conflicts between rich and poor , town and country, in the shadow of an ailing King and a fading monarchy. After eight weeks of paralyzing demonstrations calling for the government's resignation and new elections, protestors have brought the country to a point of crisis, with 89 people killed and more than 1,800 injured. Though those clashes were the worst political violence in Thailand in nearly 20 years, they resolved nothing: the country's divisions and enmities were just gravely deepened. The battle for power in Thailand â?? between social classes and between the politicians who manipulate them â?? has continued. Thailand has become "a nation cursed to live in a constant state of anxiety," according to the daily newspaper The Nation.

• Biography
  Benjamin Haselberger was born in 1973 in Germany. In 1997, before starting his photographic studies at University of Essen-Duisburg, Germany, his eye was drawn to concentration camps in Germany and Poland, which he extensively worked on while being an intern at VISUM Photo Agency, Germany.In 1998 he worked in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma, before becoming a press photographer intern at "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" in 2000. Finishing his 2nd studies at FAS-Berlin until 2006 , he worked in Poland, postwar Bosnia, and extensively in Cambodia for 3 years.