Rites & Ceremonies of South East Asia

Rites & Ceremonies of South East Asia — Vincent Peal

Rites & Ceremonies of South East Asia is a 200-page hardcover photobook by Belgian photographer Vincent Peal, published by Timeless Edition in May 2025 as part of the Hunting Asia series. The book is a bilingual edition in English and French, formatted at 28 × 19.5 cm.

About the Work

The project follows a year-long photographic route from Indonesia through to Japan, continuing onward via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Rather than surveying geography, the work concentrates on a specific register of human experience: ritual, devotion, pain, and the structures through which belief is made public and bodily.

The sequence moves through distinct ceremonial contexts — Tatung rituals in Borneo, Thaipusam in Malaysia, cremation rites on the banks of the Ganges — without treating them as isolated spectacles. Each subject is approached through direct observation, and the accumulation across the book builds a coherent visual argument about sacrifice, spiritual intensity, and collective ceremony.

The book was developed within the Hunting Asia editorial framework, which focuses on documentary work produced across the Asian continent. It sits within the broader Photobooks catalogue at Lokator100 alongside other documentary and artist publications.

About the Publisher

Timeless Edition is the publisher behind the Hunting Asia series, an editorial context dedicated to documentary photography produced across Asia. This title is released under that imprint in May 2025.