BAWAH RESERVE
A commission for a private-island resort in Indonesia’s Anambas archipelago: villas, jetties, kitchens and the people who run the place. Images from the series were later featured in Harper’s Bazaar.
Bawah Reserve is a private-island resort in the Anambas archipelago, between the Malaysian peninsula and Borneo. The resort had commissioned a video production house I collaborated with often to shoot its promotional films; they brought me in, as an independent commission, to handle the photography. The series covers the arrival by seaplane, the jetty that stitches the islands together, the villas over the lagoon, the kitchen at work and the staff who keep it all running.
Resort photography lives or dies on whether the place feels inhabited. So the series moves from landscape to interior to people at work: a chef placing garnish with tweezers, the welcome line on the jetty, a plate against the lagoon it came from.
The resort’s team later supplied images from the series to press, and they appeared in coverage of the island, including Condé Nast Traveler and Harper’s Bazaar.