Tango in
the Big Mango

Tango in the Big Mango – a Baudelaire-like photo imagination about Bangkok, working at a ground zero of now-ness.

What happens when street photography, conceptual art, and documentation are combined? The result is a unique, multifaceted panorama of images, whose versatility allows it to capture the sometimes abysmal, sometimes dazzling multiple facets of Bangkok. The photographer Peter Nitsch has captured the streets, people, and life in the capital of Thailand with his sensitive feel for the right moment and the special detail. This illustrated book turns readers into companions on his visual tour of discovery. Nitsch’s camera makes us see the city’s rhythm as a tango, which owes its idiosyncratic movement to the interaction of different cultures. A comparison that not only rhymes with “mango” (Bangkok’s nickname) but also translates the sweet and sour taste of the fruit into visual intoxication.

I tend to see this group of works as ‘documentary’ in a unique sense of the word. We tend to think of ‘documentary’ as something like a ‚capture‘ that is highly instructive and explanatory, but I see Nitsch’s use of the ‚documentary’ as something far more Baudelaire-like, a split second in time that lends our eye something prior to narrative meaning and description/definition.
GREGORY GALLIGAN, Director Thai Art Archives

Tango in the Big Mango - Collector's Box

Tango in the Big Mango – book cover photo by Thanwa Lujintanon

Tango In The Big Mango
Hatje Cantz
2021

Foreword by Gregory Galligan (Thai Art Archives, Bangkok)
Editing by Nadine Barth
Graphic design and layout by Li Jinglin
English, German
Hardcover
24.5 cm by 30 cm
160 colour plates, 160 pages
Arctic Volume White, 170 g/m2
ISBN 978-3-7757-4824-7

Where to buy
NFTs: OpenSea
Book: Hatje Cantz
Collector’s Edition in acrylic box with signed print: Chromfeld

Interviews
d1839 magazine
Fotogloria
Lenscratch

Exhibitions
photoMÜNCHEN 19, Munich, Germany 2019
Kathmandu Photo Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand 2023

A distinctive and raw portrait of contemporary Bangkok and its inhabitants that remains as complicated as inscrutable. Like Tango, Bangkok has influences from many countries. This photographic documentary concept explores the question of identity, and the boundaries between growth and angst – a finite attempt at conceiving of the inconceivability, that is life.
RETO F. BRUNNER, Curator photoMÜNCHEN

I like the portraiture, I like the mix with fashion photography, I like the use of light he does…the images connect to one another. They all create, and this is something that is difficult, variations – they talk to each other, they complement each other.
ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA, artist

During my interview with Nitsch, I came to understand that his creation of Tango in the Big Mango was much like a tango dance – long pauses, stylized positions, and great passion.
POLLY GAILLARD, Lenscratch

Many of the characters portrayed by Nitsch were interrupted in their daily chores and they seem to be looking at themselves in a mirror. And mankind needs a mirror! The mirror, as a symbol, is a proverbial representation of consciousness, imagination and thought, whose character has temporal and existential variability…In Tango in the Big Mango the portraits are an important part of the scaffold constructed for this photo book. The approach given by Nitsch, through the interconnections established with his senses, means that we are actually our mirror, which represents us in our condition of continous expectancy, thus remaining bound to crude materiality.
JM Ramirez-Suassi

You’re not sure if this is like reality or phantasy or whether he staged these. Somehow he come upon other worldly moments in life, especially #28, the guy dripping in sweat on the jogging path…I feel like a lot of the these pictures are scenes from a Murakami novel.
BARRY SUTTON, 96 Studio

The direct portrait of different individuals go beyond capturing mere candid moments like the familiar street photography. They convey something that cannot be explained solely through sight and gesture.
Bangkok Post