This series of black-and-white photographs explores the neighborhood markets (ichiba in Japanese, talad in Thai language) in Southeast and East Asia. This is a world where goods are sold directly from vendor to customer. Everything is done by hand. Sometimes the cash register is a basket suspended on a spring rope. The buyers and sellers negotiate the prices. From the viewpoint of a Westerner who has lived in New York and Tokyo, I was astonished to find such open-air morning markets and night markets, first in Bangkok and subsequently throughout the region, both in large cities and small villages. My goal for this series is to create a window into the life of these ichiba, focusing on the people there as well as the social communities. Perhaps this series of photographs will portray the spirit of the ichiba while they still exist.

D. J. Hinman is a devotee of black-and-white film photography. In the late 1990s, he developed his skills in photography through courses at the International Center for Photography (ICP) in New York. Since then he has honed his skills in photography while living in NYC and Tokyo, and while exploring local cultures in Japan and in Southeast Asia. While shooting in the field, he typically goes out on his own, on foot as much as possible, so that he can follow his inner photographer's voice and his camera. He shoots exclusively in black-and-white, develops his own film, and prints the photographs himself in the darkroom on silver-gelatin paper. D. J. Hinman has lived in Japan for the last 18 years. Ichiba in Southeast Asia is his first book.