Songwat, after the trucks stop

Songwat runs along the river at the edge of Bangkok's Chinatown. For most of its life it has been a working road — warehouses, hardware, dried goods, families living above the shop they run below.

Late in the afternoon the deliveries thin out and the road changes character. Roller shutters come down; different ones go up. The old and the new sit on the same pavement without much ceremony about it.

That overlap is the reason we keep coming back. Nothing here has been tidied up for anybody's benefit, and the texture of it — rust, paint, tile, signage — ends up in the work.