27/12/2015
This is really sad!
organisers should care more by installing waste baskets everywhere. This place was paradise 15 years ago...
https://www.facebook.com/oceandefender/photos/a.330811539652.153036.328919879652/10153911268904653/?type=3&theater
This is the aftermath of a full moon party in Thailand... For the love of POSEIDON how can you celebrate the moon and trash the ocean?
The saddest part about this picture is the fact that the great majority of the people attending these types of "parties" are people from developed countries, tourists with out consciousness.
Don't be a part of the problem, be a part of the solution.
DISCLAIMER: *The person in the picture is not responsible for the result of the party.
*The photograoher is not responsible for the result of the party either, he just took the photo.
*Not all full moon parties in Thailand end up like this.
Aloha.
www.oceandefenderhawaii.com
UPDATE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER, NATE CLARK:
Happy New Year everyone.
I am happy the photo has provoked so much controversy and discussion about environmental issues but I need to be clear that Ocean Defender and many other organizations appropriated this photo without my permission and the caption posted with it were not mine. Having said that, I know that Ocean Defender's sole intention was to spread awareness about a very serious environmental problem in Asia and around the globe.
Thousands of people used the photo as an opportunity to cast judgement on the party-goers and the Thai government. Please, I implore you to consider the larger picture here. This is not a photo of thousands of casually discarded drinking straws and bottles. This is a photo of thousands of decisions. We all make these little decisions from time to time. We, all the people of the good Earth, are the same as the people in this photo.
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This image is only part of the grand story that is the Full-Moon Party, Koh Phangan. The photo was not meant to stand alone, but to be part of a series of images on the subject of debauchery, hedonism and humanity's search for personal happiness. This photo essay would have also included shots of the massive cleanup attempt that the locals undertake after every single party.
For those of you who are interested, I'd like to explain how the photo came to be. To do that we must go back in time:
My first experience at Koh Phangan's Full-Moon Party was back in 2005, long before I studied photography. I was young, crazy and living in a tropical paradise. I wasn't interested in world culture and politics like I am now. I wanted to party, I wanted to get drunk, I wanted to dance, and most of all, I wanted girls. After two weeks on the beach, the Full-Moon Party began.
The party was fantastic. I drank buckets of Thai rum and Red Bull. I danced, shotgunned beers, sucked tequila out of pierced belly buttons, rolled around in the sand and swam in the sea with my new friends from around the world. It never once occurred to me that we were doing anything wrong.
Early that morning I was very drunk – smashed in fact – and stumbling around the beach looking for a friend I'd lost. As the rising sun illuminated the beach I was horrified to see the mounds of trash – the buckets, the bottles and the drinking straws – washing out to sea with the rising tide. I sat on a rock and watched, hypnotized.
I saw something while sitting on that rock that I'll never forget. I saw two gorgeous, blond-haired foreigners having s*x in the water in front of a group of children. Trash-laden waves washed over them as they fu**ed, like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in “From Here to Eternity” but with full pe*******on, garbage and wide-eyed Thai children. The couple took no notice of the kids, or me, they were too caught up in the pleasure of their personal experience. I was filled with a sense of dread. This emotion, this dread, burned itself into my brain and scarred me. The sheer hedonism of it. The sheer, goddamned, unapologetic hedonism. And I was part of it. I never turned away from the fact that I was part of it.
Nine years later, in 2014, I attended photojournalism school in Canada and then returned to Asia to work on my portfolio. I'm a world-traveler, and my dream has always been to tell world stories. After some harrowing months shooting the earthquake in Nepal, I found myself back in Thailand, visiting friends. I knew I was going to shoot the party.
Maybe it's not the most original idea, but I saw the potential for a very great story, a comment on humanity and our perpetual search for happiness and how we will often forsake others to accomplish this goal of happiness. That couple having s*x, they were perfectly in the moment. They'd tuned out the world and they were completely happy. Isn't that what we all want? To find bliss? So what extremes are we willing to go to in our search for happiness? These are the questions I wanted to ask, not answer, with my photographs of the Full-Moon Party.
(note: Upon editing this last paragraph I can understand how this idea became a fantastic metaphor for humanity's treatment of planet Earth.)
True, I had no interest in capturing the fire spinning, the buckets of booze, or the good times. There are about a million of those photos on the Koh Phangan page. In journalism school, I was taught to find a unique perspective, to show people something they haven't seen before in an attempt to persuade people to look inside themselves.
I shot and shot. Everything was there. Passed out drunks. People pi***ng in the sea. People making out. Naked people. One Thai man was punching random foreign men in the face. There were drugged out people falling on me. People trying to grab at the camera. Trash was everywhere, washing into the sea. Teams of kids collected bottles and uniformed cleanup crews arrived and started their work. That afternoon I posted a few images on my page. The next morning several friends messaged me about one of my photos going viral. I was shocked. Yes, I was upset that nobody asked me for permission to use the photo and the people who took it captioned it with words that I wouldn't have used. I was also concerned because the photo had been cropped and edited without my permission. That's not my work. The real photo is attached below.
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Lastly, I want to make it clear that I had no intention to portray Thailand or Thai people in a bad light. I love Thailand and the people here. There is, for sure, a massive clean up effort after the party ends and by 11 a.m., the beach looks pristine. Each of the thousands of party-goers pays an admission of about US$3 that is supposed to fund the cleanup effort. I'm not an expert on this point, it needs research.
Please understand that Thai people love nature and the environment. Thailand is a developing country and the Full-Moon Party on Haad Rin is one of the biggest tourist draws in the nation. A huge portion of Thailand's GDP comes from tourism.
Please stay tuned for the complete article in the coming weeks. If you'd like to contact me, please do so at the 'Nate Clark Images' page or at nateclarkimages.com.
Peace,
Nate Clark
