I got into photography when an old friend sold me a film camera. I started off by taking photos of friends and the things we did.
That was a lot of fun. Later on, though, after I had just arrived in Thailand in October 2023, a new friend showed me his portraits of Vietnamese locals he took on the famous Ha Giang loop. “You can just walk up to people and take a photo?” I wondered, “but aren’t you nervous?” Despite these questions, I was enamoured. I knew immediately that street and documentary photography was what I wanted to pursue.
A stranger’s smile captures something you can’t plan for, and that’s what travel is. That night, I took a tuk tuk to Chinatown in Bangkok, and with the sound of car horns and simmering food all around me, I started taking photos of people on the street for the first time.
These are the first street photos I ever took that night:
And just like that, I was hooked.
The thrill of shooting with my little Nikon Zoom Touch 500 changed the direction of my life. Three years later, photography is how I move through the world. I’m drawn to a person’s style, their smile, their expression, the way they carry themselves. Street and documentary photography is my way of capturing people for who they are. The conversations that began with asking a stranger for a photo have taken me to remote monasteries in Ladakh, the Byzantine cave churches of Cappadocia, the jungles of Laos, and the streets of Cairo, Beijing and Bangkok, where it all started.
Now that I’m based in Winnipeg, I shoot portraits and live music, and I go on documentary expeditions whenever I can. At home or on the road, the instinct is the same:
Find the moment a person is most themselves.
Since that first night in Bangkok, my work has been published by Field Mag, i-D Magazine, Docu Magazine, and The Manitoban.
If you’re looking for portraits, live music coverage, or documentary work, I’d love to hear from you.
– Jayden
