Thomas Merkel pursues travel photography as a hobby. On his holiday trips he is fascinated especially by the different Asian cultures.
Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand or Sri Lanka, he always captures not only the obvious motifs with his camera, but also has an eye for the detail of the silent things.
More travel pictures of Thomas Merkel esoacially from Sri Lanka can be found on the page Geoffrey Bawa.
“PROJEKT 50 came about on the occasion of my 50th birthday in August 2016 from the idea of wanting to eat a Vietnamese Phở soup on that day. The best Phở bò is in Hà Nội, Việt Nam so they say and that's how the project was born.
At Phở Thìn I sweated and ate soup with chopsticks, drank tea with a German-Vietnamese in the oldest, private temple in Hà Nội and explained to him the operating instructions for his solar lamp and I bravely waited out stormy rain under canopies with the locals.
During this trip numerous photos were taken in the streets, temples and pagodas, from which I chose 50 for a book project."
