Monthly Photos Mar 2025 : Serendipity－Good fortune to you！

Photos taken by ILCAA staff and associates are posted here once a month; most of them are taken during their field research in Asia and Africa.
(The copyright belongs to the photographers.)

Cremations in villages of Southern Thailand have an old saying: during bone picking: it is fortunate to find coins that were placed in the coffin. Everyone is intent on looking for coins, setting bones aside.
When I attended at the cremation of a woman who had helped me for almost 30 years, I was recording a video of the bone-picking process. At the end, as I felt around in the ashes at my feet to pick up even a piece of her remains, my hand touched a big molten lump—nearly ten coins fused together. Everyone said that she wanted to give it to me. The lump of coins is still carefully stored in a drawer in my chest of drawer, where I keep important things.

November 26th, 2017
Satun, Thailand
Photograph by Ryoko NISHII