At Zontiga, we return again and again to the question: what does it mean to photograph a city with honesty? Not as a postcard, not as a branding exercise — but as a breathing, evolving organism. Peter Bialobrzeski’s long-term series City Diaries stands out as one of the most sincere and methodical answers to that question. And here in Southeast Asia, his work feels especially close to home.

A German photographer with roots in politics and sociology, Bialobrzeski began the City Diaries project in 2013 as a quiet rebellion against spectacular, over-stylized urban imagery. With minimal equipment, short stays, and a commitment to twilight light, he produces a visual field note — subdued, deliberate, and democratic in its gaze.

We at Zontiga are particularly moved by the way Southeast Asian cities appear in this series. Across volumes like Yangon Diary, Bangkok Diary, Georgetown Diary, and most recently, Kuching Diary, Bialobrzeski gives space to the texture and tempo of urban life — not through grand moments, but through everyday materiality.

His Kuching Diary is a significant addition. Sarawak’s capital, often overlooked in the conversation of global cities, is given the same attentiveness and neutrality as London or Wuhan. Bialobrzeski captures its layered personality: colonial remnants, modernist housing blocks, hand-painted signage, and the changing edge of the river. He allows Kuching to speak for itself — not as an “exotic” destination, but as a city negotiating its own identity between tradition, ecology, and development.

This approach echoes throughout his Southeast Asian work. In Yangon, he documents a city caught between military history and capitalist promise. Bangkok Diary strips away the city’s nightlife gloss and instead zeroes in on structure and routine. Georgetown Diary — a particularly meaningful volume for us in Malaysia — eschews the nostalgia often associated with the city’s UNESCO status, showing instead how lived reality and tourism coexist, sometimes uneasily.

For us, these diaries are more than art objects — they’re cultural documents. Bialobrzeski’s consistent format across cities gives us a rare comparative lens. We start noticing not only what’s unique, but what’s shared: the scaffolding, the signage, the margins where life happens.

At Zontiga, we see City Diaries as an important reference point for Southeast Asian photographers. In a media environment saturated with cinematic urban portraits and AI-slick edits, his work urges us to slow down and really see. To consider our cities not just as settings, but as characters. As places shaped by policy, migration, aspiration, and memory.

Bialobrzeski doesn’t offer conclusions — he offers invitations. To look at our cities again, and then again. With care. With humility. And perhaps, with new eyes.