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“Are there really no Thai photographers of ability whom we could rightly call ‘masters’, as they have in the West? Photography came to Siam back in 1845, towards the end of the Third Reign [King Nangklao or Rama 3 of the Bangkok era]. That’s around 173 years ago. Do we really have no masters in this discipline?” Manit Sriwanichpoom poses this question to himself before giving up on teaching photography at universities a decade ago. Wrestling with this problem led Manit to believe that as long as our photography academics do not seriously research and collect the work of Thai photographers of the past to create our own text, then we would continue to have to “breathe air through the white man’s nose”. We would never in this way develop self-knowledge and self-worth. In 2010 Manit decided to launch a photographic research project called ‘Seeking Forgotten Thai Photographers’. In 5 years, he would be able to rediscover 7 Thai masters of photography of the period between 1950-1970.