Lady Erb Bunnag was amongst a handful of royal consorts and relatives to experiment with photography in early modern Thailand, and arguably the country’s first female photographer. Though several royal consorts and children experimented with photography during this era, E. Bunnag was the most prolific, leaving dozens of images of her sisters, cousins and other consorts (such as her friend, high queen Phra Rachaya Chao Dara Rasami) available for researchers in Thailand’s National Archives.
E. Bunnag was one of five sisters, referred to as the ‘Kok Oh’ [Oh Clique], who served as royal consorts during King Chulalongkorn’s (1853–1910) reign. The Bunnag family had been closely tied to the Thai monarchy since the seventeenth century, when their ancestor, the merchant Sheikh Ahmad, emigrated to Siam from Persia to become a minister to Ayutthaya’s King Intharatcha.
As one of 153 royal consorts to King Chulalongkorn, E. Bunnag’s status as a high-ranking consort placed her within Siam’s most elite space: the Inner Palace, a domain governed by patriarchal hierarchies where the king’s queens, consorts and concubines lived and raised the king’s children. As such, she was able to chronicle the daily lives of royal women, which were otherwise inaccessible to anyone outside the royal palace.
