Ahangama Beyond The Surf: Oken Silva Spotlights The Residents Of The Coastal Town

On Sri Lanka’s southern coast lies Ahangama, a town defined by its fishermen perched on stilts and its salt-soaked winds. Though in recent years it may have become synonymous with boutique cafés and surf culture, often likened to “Bali 2.0”, Yet, photographer Oken Silva reminds us through his latest photoseries, that Ahangama is still at its core a living community, held together by the people who give it its rhythm and identity.

Oken's portraits from Ahangama form an intimate chapter of his ongoing 'Residents' series, which seeks to archive the human essence of places through their everyday characters. Here, the people take center stage: the couple who first opened a humble coconut stall for surfers long before chic cafés arrived, the fisherman smoking calmly in the market, the boatman guiding travelers through inland waterways, or the station master presiding over the flow of journeys at Ahangama’s railway station. Each photograph resists the flattening gaze of tourism, instead restoring individuality, pride, and a sense of myth to lives that are often overlooked.

What defines Oken's work is defined by a grandeur not in scale but in sensibility. His use of light is central to the drama of his portraits. Whether it is the soft, diffused glow falling across a market vendor’s face or the sharp daylight etching the form of a stilt fisherman against the horizon, his compositions rely on illumination to elevate the ordinary into the near-mythic. His balance of light and shadows deepen textures like weathered skin, and the patina of walls and tools. His framing often isolates the subject within their environment: a fruit seller enveloped by the colours of his stall, a fisherman poised against the endless sea. Each photograph feels sculpted by light, rendering everyday figures while preserving the authenticity of their lived spaces.

The Ahangama chapter is part of Oken's wider 'Residents' project, which also turns its lens toward Arugam Bay in Sri Lanka and Old Delhi in India. Across these distinct geographies, his approach remains constant: capturing people caught in the flow of their lives. In Old Delhi, this meant archiving the pulse of narrow lanes and storied bazaars; in Arugam Bay, it was the surfers catching waves and tending to their boards as well as vendors at the beach.

Together, the series works against reducing places to postcards, instead preserving the subtleties and characters that make them whole. In doing so, Oken's portraits take on an anthropological tone, recording not just faces but ways of being, and reminding us that the essence of a place is inseparable from the people who inhabit it.

Follow Oken here.

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