The Singapore International Photography Festival is a biennial gathering of minds from around the world with the common pursuit of advancing the art and appreciation of photography. It aims to be a much-needed arena of critical thought and academic discussion on photography in Southeast Asia. The SIPF also functions as a key platform to discover, nurture and propel Southeast Asian photographers onto the international stage. Through its satellite programmes, the festival hopes to engage the public and cultivate a larger audience. At the core of SIPF is a firm belief that photography can be enjoyed by all.
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Director's Message
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Essay: David Doesn't Know Where Goliath Is by Alejandro Castellote
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Essay: Photoscape : Capturing the Real & Surreal by Patricia Levasseur de la Motte
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Essay: Questions on Contemporary Photography by Zeng Han
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Inside Out: A Magnum Photos Showcase by Stuart Franklin, Mark Power & Jacob Aue Sobol
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Silvermine by Thomas Sauvin
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The History of Monuments by Wang Qingsong
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Open Call Showcase — Photographs
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Exhibitors' Biographies
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Highlights
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2012 Festival Programmes Contributors
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Acknowledgements
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Sponsors
DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE
In the blink of an eye, or should I say, in the click of a shutter, the 3rd Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF) is back again, presenting you with the best experience of photography.
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3 Over the years, international photographers have begun to see SIPF as a key event to take part in. In the 3 rd Open Call Showcase, SIPF has received tremendous submissions from 50 countries, out of which our invited curators — Alejandro Castellote (Spain), Patricia Levasseur de la Motte (France/Singapore) and Zeng Han (China) have selected 414 works by 50 photographers from 25 countries to display at the Alliance Française, National Library Building, Singapore Management University Gallery, The Substation, ArtScience Museum® at Marina Bay Sands and Photographic Society of Singapore at Selegie Arts Centre. This is a wonderful visual treat for the public with free admission throughout the festival. As much as we believe in a single magical moment when a photo is captured, nothing in the 3 rd SIPF is coincidental or accidental. Back when we were planning for the inaugural SIPF in the year 2008, there were many fantastic ideas that had to be shelved due to the lack of man-power and resources, but these ideas were never forgotten. We would revisit our archive of dream projects every year looking for the opportune time to pluck them out and make them come true. We believe that truly and surely, as we improve over time, we would receive enough support to bring all of them to fruition. I am excited to say that the 3 rd SIPF is when some of these projects will see the light of day; many of the new programmes and initiatives that we are rolling out this year have been in the pipeline right from the very beginning. Our first education programme "Conversations with the Black Box" is one of them. It is a programme designed for upper secondary and tertiary students, aimed to guide them in understanding and appreciating a photograph from different points of view, and to form their own opinions through critical thinking. One year in the making, the education programme comes with a publication based on the Open Call Showcase, with hands-on activities to engage young minds. With the education programme, SIPF hopes to help shape a future audience who embrace and consume photography with a level of understanding and appreciation.
to Thailand, Turkey, France and China. This is part of our effort to promote and nurture emerging talents under the roving showcase called "NOMAD". The positive feedback we have received from these exhibitions places an affirmation on what the SIPF has set out to achieve for the photography community. In 2013, we hope to see the works of artists scattering to more places and reaching out to new audiences. It has always been a balancing act for the Festival to remain sustainable while doing more for the community, yet it has also always been clear to us that we have to be relentless in fulfilling our mission as a bridge between the artist and the audience, the local and the international community, and very importantly, between photography and the public at large. It is a continuous mission that we've held close to our hearts, central to our decisions and our actions. The process itself is sweetened by like-minded individuals and corporate companies who believe in the mission of SIPF and trust the team to create a platfrom that benefits the community. On behalf of the team, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude to the National Arts Council, City Developments Limited, and AVS Printing Pte Ltd. There are names we would like highlight: Mr. Kwek Leng Joo, Esther An, Kelvin Mun, Elaine Ng, Chan Wai Ling, Ho Tzu Yin, and Annabelle. The Festival is most meaningful and rewarding for us when we see people actively engaged in photography through SIPF. This time around, we have no less than 55 exhibitors, 28 presenters, 15 film screenings, 6 professional programmes and 6 weekend activities. We have filled the 3 rd SIPF to the brim with what you've come to know and love, and also the new and exciting to let you experience photography in the most brilliant ways. Enjoy!
Another initiative that we have uncovered is the HOP (House of Photography), our ambitious endeavour to bring the best experience of photography basics to the community. The HOP is a photography education space converted from a shipping container to resemble a dark room, and it will travel around Singapore for a period of two years so that everyone will have an opportunity to access it. Photography is already a part of our life in every imaginable way, from handy phone cameras to the thousands of images online available at our fingertips. With the HOP, we have come full circle by reintroducing the beginnings of photography to the community. Not forgetting the young professionals, SIPF has collaborated with the prestigious Magnum Photos Agency to guide and nurture the next generation of photographers through several months of online discussion and critique sessions, followed by a 5-day in-person workshop in Singapore. This is the beginning of many more great collaborations and in time to come, we hope SIPF could contribute remarkably to the professional development in this region. Yours Sincerely, Even though SIPF is a biennial affair, the interim year is a busy period which the festival select works from the last Open Call Showcase to exhibit in various countries, the last having travelled
Gwen Lee Director, SIPF
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ALEJANDRO CASTELLATO CURATORIAL ESSAY
David Doesn't Know Where Goliath is
Nostalgia for the Absolute In an essay published in 1974, George Steiner1 reflects on the decadence that religious systems have gone through in today's society, and examines the substitute mythologies that have emerged in Europe during the 19 th and 20 th century in order to fill the gap left after what Kant called the "death of God". Steiner designates Marx's philosophy, Freud's psychoanalysis and LéviStrauss' anthropology. All of these "substitute beliefs", according to Steiner, have a totalising intention and aspire towards providing answers to everything that concerns Man's presence in the world. Just like the religion, which they question, these mythologies are also surrounded by a set of dogmas developed through languages of their own, emblematic images, metaphors and dramatic sets in order to describe the world of their own symbolic cosmogony. It is not the place here to dwell on the aspects that disqualified these three mythologies from truly taking their place as a scientific alternative to the magic precepts of the Christian religion, but it is worth pointing out the substratum that coexists in all of these totalising proposals: the human being's will to possess an account that contains answers — whether they are scientific or a-scientific — in order to satisfy his spirit's burning desire for truth.
decades, but the speed with which the asynchrony between its aims and its practices have been shown has weakened the possibility of it rising up into the religion of the new millennium. However, that which for some is a headless monster, or one with many heads that are not always visible (we always come back to mythical allegories), initially awoke some considerable enthusiasm due to its promising statement of positivist intentions. Despite all the critical voices underlying his somewhat economic character and minimising the importance of other aims, which were closer and supposedly more beneficial for society, it does not seem pertinent to ignore some of the more "philosophical" suppositions that are a part of his founding argument (if indeed there had been a formulation of that nature). Starting from such possible situations, it may be interesting to export the reflections which, over different periods of time, Kant and Michael Foucault have made in relation to the French Revolution: Kant stated that the true sign of progress was not the Revolution itself, but the enthusiasm it generated, and Foucault wondered about what to do with that enthusiasm. These may perhaps be pertinent comments for one to overcome the simplistic Manichaeism with which the issue of globalisation and its consequences are usually dealt.
It is not rash to think that globalisation is the only totalising project that has emerged over recent
What is certain is that society once again aspires towards possessing mythologies in order to
5 grant answers to its metaphysical and everyday problems. And it faces the objective problems of globalisation with a radical attitude similar to that which Marxism used in order to question the capitalist system. But globalisation works through institutional structures, organisms of all kinds of scale and markets of material and symbolic goods that are more difficult to identify and control than when economies, communications and the arts operated solely within a national horizon. With the time of the ideologies with a hegemonic vocation and that of the sciences that responded to all the enigmas of Man being over, relativisation has been set up as one of the melancholic signs of our time, to the frustration of the churches and the old political structures. It is no easy task to try to find the guilty parties in that intangible mesh of that economic globalisation and its local and universal implications had become. Not even the economic powers know what they are talking about when they talk about "the markets". Not only does David not know where Goliath is 2 in order to throw his stones at him, but Goliath himself has been there for some time, like the protagonist of the film Deconstructing Harry by Woody Allen, out of focus. Culture in the Global Age The world of culture is no longer justified as a higher activity. Indeed, artists are as lost as the rest of society, and they prefer to ask questions rather than give answers. Contemporary culture does not only deal with patrons, politicians or institutions, but also with that disseminated economic power that is hidden beneath the name of globalisation. Perhaps for this reason, suggests Néstor García Canclini 3 , those who reflect on contemporary artistic proposals "are increasingly concerned with understanding the harsh data of the economy, those from which come the new rules for the scientific and artistic markets. Given that globalisation is presented as an evasive and unmanageable object, those who manage it use narratives and metaphors in order to try to explain it. Thus, from a socio-anthropological view of culture, it is necessary to analyse both the statistics and the conceptual texts as well as the accounts and images with those that they try to name their purposes". That is, globalisation is being given a status similar to that which was shown in Steiner's substitute mythologies, and, consequently, attention is granted to the subjective metaphors and the narratives despite them not being rational arguments. The speed with which changes in names has been taking place during our period — we have gone in a few years from embracing post-modernity to re cuperating modernity, although this might be, in Arjun Appadurai's words, over the top. The traditional classifications into which artistic productions have been divided have long been discredited.
For many years curators and thinkers in the art world have been imitating quantum physicists when they state that everything is related and takes place in simultaneous terms. Photography, as well as the art of the last decades in general have started backing the trans-disciplinary aspect, and have progressively been approaching the positions of those who defend not fragmenting knowledge into disciplines of production. Nevertheless, we are told with schizophrenic regularity of the return of painting and we discover that nowadays its corpse is in excellent health. We have indeed witnessed a revisiting of theories that we believed had been overcome, such as the status of the veracity of photography, and the humanist and committed reporters returning in spectacular dimensions. Now covered in the ethics that supported them in a good part of the 20 th century, they once again call upon the redeeming function of photography as a visible screen for injustices and as a loudspeaker for those dissolute communities who could not achieve the visibility of the media. They seem to ignore the fact that photography has not been able to stop a single war over the last decades. In a certain manner, the objective decline of the social influence of committed reportage may have to do with the difficulty of identifying one single aspect responsible for dramas and injustice. We are all, as active consumers or passive spectators of the failure of rationality, co-responsible to different extents for many of the ills that affect contemporary society, whether in relation to the environmental crisis, real estate speculation or the decadence of politics. Photography is not only capable of modifying problems, but also aspires towards naming them. It has lost the "romantic" battle to change the world. With this redeeming function having been deactivated and neutralised by mass tourism, its condition as a privileged window in order to gain access to unknown worlds, a part of contemporary documentary activity now moves in a zone of zero feedback to society. The explanation for this lack of social response in relation to these dramas is sharply pointed out by John Berger in his essay Another Way of Telling: "In postmodern society the only thing that is shared is the spectacle, that game in which no one plays and everyone watches". Starting out from this statement, it is understandable for some artists to use theatricality as one of the languages that are most in touch with the way in which society depicts itself. Two photographers from very different parts of the world, Marcos López, from Argentina, and Wang Qingsong, from China, whose work is based on scenestaging, consider themselves to be documentary photographers. Neither of the two makes an exercise of cynicism out of this: they use the
1. Steiner, George. Nostalgia for the Absolute. (CBC Massey Lecture, 1974.) 2. This is a title by Néstor García Canclini for a chapter in his essay La globalización imaginada. Paidos, México DF, 1999. p. 26. 3. García Canclini, Néstor. Ibid.
ALEJANDRO CASTELLATO CURATORIAL ESSAY visual grammars that are most understandable for society in order to make a critical account of the times in which we live. Globalisation also means recognising a synchrony of thought between people belonging to different cultures. Wang Qingsong and López, like many contemporary artists, make productive use of previous resources, adapting them to new contexts, and follow hybrid languages that are often linked to local or universal artistic traditions; but that exercise of subjectivisation does not necessarily mean an abandoning of social commitment, nor is an attitude taken lightly. One thing is not letting oneself to be released from one's ethical conscience, and another thing is to want to change the world with one's photographs, or to take the underprivileged out of their despair. Where Europeans look from, what we are looking towards and how we represent it It is always risky to try to see identical characteristics common to a community of countries, but sometimes history insists on drawing out certain stereotypes; and stereotypes always have a certain degree of truth, which allows the subjective interpretations that are taken from them to also have certain logic. This is the only way that one can read this short chapter. The cultures that embraced the Protestant religions are not so moved towards allegories and metaphors as are the Catholic ones, as for centuries they have been brought up under a system that is partially or totally iconoclastic. Religious images, both pictorial and sculptural, have fulfilled their function as intermediaries between Man and the Gods; and the folks who are familiarised with the use of these mediatingimages easily move between these symbols and metaphors. It is not in vain that the most spectacular works of baroque sculpture, just to present a couple of examples, are in the main Italian or Spanish: the former have a high degree of theatricality in the subjects and positions adopted, while the Spanish ones, which are almost exclusively religious, stand out due to their great realism and their narrative character, as they were intended for popular devotion. Both currents were at the service of the Catholic Counter Reformation, which defended the authority of the Pope in Rome against the Puritan humanism proposed by the Reform presented by Luther and Calvin. For the Protestant people, God's intermediary on Earth is Man, and thus they have seen themselves as the "chosen people". As such, they have historically shown their right to dominate nature and the "inferior" races. It is true that Catholic, Jewish and Muslim civilisations have also all considered themselves to be "God's chosen people", but the spectacular nature
of scientific and technological advances and the sophistication of the Protestant systems of social organisation have contributed towards establishing the differences and placing its culture as a referential mark. In Europe the alternative to Protestant culture does not come, however, from the Catholic religion, but rather from the lay revolution that occupies France in the 17 th century. They both put man on the pyramid of power and take pride in his conquests, but the French turning point supposes an attempt to lower the category of the influence of God. The result is a scientific rationalism that becomes the measure and the instrument of validating all the theories about the functioning of nature and the naturalist study of the human being, which in the 19 th century gives rise to Positivism. The penetration of scientific thought was more and more reinforced over the centuries, and took hold in Western civilisation so much that for a good part of that society it became a paradigm of knowledge. In any case, George Steiner holds that the development of the sciences in Europe has a Greek root: "Other cultures and communities made scientific and intellectual discoveries. But it is only in ancient Greece that there is the development of the cultivation of the theory, of disinterested speculative thought. (…) The primordial act of being amazed, and its technical-logical development is thoroughly Platonic and Aristotelian. There thus arises, in the final instance, the advance of European, and later American science, and technology, over all the other cultures" 4. Steiner's tone, which is occasionally irritating, does not reduce the certainty of his statement. This is elliptically confirmed with delicate bitterness by the Japanese writer Jun’Ichirõ Tanizaki in his beautiful essay In Praise of Shadows (1933): "But it is on occasions like this that I always think how different ever ything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistr y: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of ever yday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art — would they not have suited our national temper better than they do? In fact our conception of physics itself, and even the principles of chemistr y, would probably differ from that of Westerners; and the facts we are now taught concerning the nature and function of light, electricit y, and atoms might well have presented themselves in different form. (…) Of course I am only indulging in idle speculation; of scientific matters I know nothing. But had we devised independently at least the more practical sorts of inventions, this could not have
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DAVID DOESN'T KNOW WHERE GOLIATH IS
4. Steiner, George (2005). The Idea of Europe. Nexus Institute.
had profound influence upon the conduct of our everyday lives, and even upon government, religion, art, and business. The Orient quite conceivably could have opened up a world of technology entirely its own." 5
And one should immediately add that Europe had celebrated these showings of "exoticism". Nothing is more to our liking than seeing other peoples showing their alterity. The European gaze on Latin American art, African art (primitive art as it was called during the modernist period), post-Soviet art and now Asian art has been traditionally contaminated by the spirit of Marco Polo; and subject to conditioning factors of the economic, political and post-colonial order. It wasn't so many years ago that the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Grande Halle de la Villette organised the major ethnocentric exhibition Magiciens de la terre (1989), in which the artists were often treated like Shamans. The way that Europeans have seen the rest of the world, particularly during the colonial period of the 19 th century, is clearly reflected in the early moments of photography. The pioneer photo graphers who travelled on scientific expeditions to distant countries adopted a typological system of representations based on anthropology, which showed their feeling of superiority in relation to other races. "They took photos of 'the natives', their customs, their architecture, their wealth, their poverty, the breasts of their women, their hairstyles; and these images, besides being startling, were presented and seen as a proof of the justice existing in the imperial division of the world. A division between those who organised, rationalised and inspected, and those who were inspected"6 . But the attraction that European empires felt for different cultures was not something exclusive to the West. All cultures have shown their fascination for that which is different. That which distinguishes this interest, which is common to all civilisations, is the European will to classify the world in order to make it comprehensible, and the ideologyand hierarchy-based treatment behind the scientific parameters, as well as the later mass broadcasting of their studies, presenting them as paradigms of anthropology and ethnography. Although many cultures have become close to those different to theirs, that which separates the attitude taken by Europeans is, that they did not stretch their curiosity towards logic and scientific practice. Steiner himself quotes the Greek historian Herodotus, when he set out the following question: "Every year we send out our ships, with great danger to life and to great expense, to Africa, asking, 'Who are you? What are your laws? What is your language? ' They have never sent out a ship to ask us anything" 7.
7 In a certain manner art is an account with which artists reinterpret and accept tradition, granting meaning to a work of reconfiguration of history, and including their own presence in the world. For that reason any insistence on the social anthropology that abounds in British approaches to this and the premises of objectivity, almost tautology, that are defended by the German school are an echo of the formal Puritanism that historically emanates from the Protestant imaginary and which is clear to many people; the shocking fact is that while Europe is drowning in the economic area and in its project for a federal union of nation-states, it manages to maintain the arrogant stance that drives it on to keep on imposing the "Western" artistic canon on the cultures and emerging economies of Asia and Latin America. And no society has resigned itself to losing cultural leadership because this brings with it a slimming of its income. Let us remember that culture belongs to the third sector of the economy: that of services, which covers, among other activities, communications, finances, tourism, the hotel business, leisure, culture, spectacles, transportation, commerce and education. Paraphrasing the statement made by the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz about war, art is "the prolonging of politics by other means" and its strategies are unfolded on many layers, not always visible, but always close to the sets where power is enacted. All of this success of the Western models that can be seen throughout the world by means of the cloning of European and American proposals responds more to economically-based strategies — access to the art markets, for example — or to a synchronisation with the contemporary mantra of globalisation, and much less to a real influence of these proposals. The projection of power that the West continues to arise in relation to many emerging nations shows the mutual dependence that exists among the "ancient" Centres and Peripheries; the former needs the latter to stand out and to show their dimension, and the peripheries go on measuring up their modernity in the mirror of Europe and the USA. "Men", stated Machiavelli with a certain cynicism, "are so simple and subject themselves so easily to present needs that the trickster will always find someone willing to be fooled" 8. However, the new economic powers are bringing forward some diverging examples of that codependence. In the first decade of the 21st century many galleries and institutions set up in China with the aim of selling European or American works to the thousands of Chinese millionaires who had been coming into the art market for the first time. But the surprise was the fact that these new collectors mainly supported Chinese or Asian artists. Many of these art dealers must have
5. Tanizaki. In Praise of Shadows. Leete's Island Books, 1977. 6. Berger, John (1997). Another Way of Telling. 7. Steiner, George (2005). The Idea of Europe. Nexus Institute. 8. Niccolò Machiavelli. The Prince.
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ALEJANDRO CASTELLATO CURATORIAL ESSAY gone back to their countries with empty pockets or having to recycle their list of artists, including Chinese artists in their catalogue. Asia is also being seen in terms of self-representation, given the formidable cultural tradition it has possessed for thousands of years. In this collective project many artists are voluntarily refusing to use a self-referential imaginary and are drawing out a hybrid iconography, which borrows from some of the Western models in order to re -semanticise them according with their own tradition and with their way of relating with the world. This hybridization in art is the natural prolonging of the processes that are being produced in many other fields, and which both Asia and Latin America are heading, in many cases after many decades and in some ways for centuries: the inter- ethnic mixing, the crossing of frontiers, the de-colonisations, the massive displacing of people from the countryside to the cities, the languages, the political ideas, the religions, the crossings between scientific disciplines, the associations among private companies and public institutions, the gastronomy and, obviously, the music. These countries are now the true stage where globalisation is unveiling its set. Obviously, none of these processes is exempt from conflicts. For the British curator Paul Wombell, "the rhetoric of globalisation camouflages the local and allows us to believe that we live in a world in which we are not attached to anything or anyone; it makes us think that all peoples and all cities are the same: that we wear the same clothes and we watch the same TV programs". For him, "globalisation is like a blanket that covers over the differences and hides the complexity. In its current form it defines us all as consumers because it is firstly and formerly an economic phenomenon" 9. These frictions, far from solving the issues, have often led to a regression towards the local and otherwise to the appearance of social "alter- globalisation" movements that support global cooperation and interaction and are opposed to the negative effects of economic globalisation. A Cloud of Images The mass use of images that is now taking place throughout the world is justified in a feeling, which was also an obsession for people in the 19 th century. At that time the speed that was being set out by the great changes in technologies, in the systems of production and in culture, showed the need that man had for a territory of solidity. The discovery of photography presents one with an instrument to symbolically capture the evanescence of the real. In the same manner that machines acted as an artificial double of
their workers, photography became an artificial double of reality. Its use as a faithful record of the world stated the need for certainties in a century that was dazzled and overwhelmed by the fleeting nature of the changes that were taking place. Nowadays also, the inaccessible virtuality of the world that is represented through screens and in which we have seen the failure of the emancipating ideals of modernity, once again puts us in the hands of photography for us to bring about the solid account of our evanescent reality. Except that now we use photography as a sort of mirror that gives us back that image of overflowing modernity10 described by Appadurai, and which makes us long for a social catharsis. An alternative to the stifling hegemony of globalisation is the concept of glocalisation, a term coined by the sociologist Roland Robertson, and brought to popular attention in the Chinese artistic context by the curator Hou Hanru. Glocal refers to a duality that is very active in contemporary art, given that it allows the work to include a dynamic tension between local and global narrative traditions, thus creating new formalisations in artistic practices. The artists who previously were forced to deterritorialise the work, so as to not be classified within some totalising parameters defined from the outside, are now free to explore all kinds of subject matters through their own world view. At the same time, they take into account those who reflect on the same issues from other views, and are aware that the local was previously contaminated by the exotic patina of multiculturalism. This is in fact a metonymy of the global and probably a way of acknowledging that creation will increasingly be an individual process and will be progressively aimed towards "building a community". That is, by abandoning the capitalist paradigm, which placed the individual at the top of the pyramid of consumerism, and going back to the spirit of the tribe, just that now it would be a global tribe open to new ideals. As Arjun Appadurai stated, "imagination, particularly when it is collective, may be the fuel for action". And this is how the age-old power that art possesses may intervene today.
DAVID DOESN'T KNOW WHERE GOLIATH IS
9. Wombell, Paul. Local, el fin de la globalización. Catalogue from the exhibition of the same name. Consejería de cultura y deportes, Comunidad de Madrid, 2007. p. 11. 10. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at large/La Modernidad desbordada. Ed. Trilce S.A. Montevideo, Uruguay, 2001. Alejandro Castellote (Spain) began working as a photography curator in 1982. He was director of the Photography Department at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid from 1985 to 1996, during which he organised five editions of the Festival FOCO (Fotografía Contemporánea) and was also responsible for programming exhibitions, workshops and other activities. In 1987, he launched the Minerva Photography Gallery at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, a space devoted to young photographers. He was artistic director and founder of the International Photography Festival PHotoEspaña in Madrid from 1998 to 2000. He worked for Lunwerg Publishers, and was responsible for the Contemporary Photography section, publishing amongst others the book Mapas Abiertos: Fotografía Latinoamericana, 1991–2002. In 2005 and 2006, he was the contents adviser for C Photo Magazine in London and curated the exhibition C on Cities for the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2006. He is an academic member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. He has been a guest curator for Latin America of Photoquai — a biennial organized by the Museum Quai de Branly at Paris — and curator for the first three editions of the Festival Getxophoto, Bilbao, Spain. Presently, he works freelance, and is guest curator of the Festival of visual arts (Picha) of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, curator of the Spanish representation at the Seoul Photo Fair in Seoul, South Korea, director of the collection Latin American photographers Library-PHotoBolsillo edited by La Fábrica, Madrid, and teaches at the Master of Photography of the School EFTI in Madrid. In 2006 he was awarded with the Prize Bartolomé Ros for the best professional track record in photography in Spain.
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PATRICIA LEVASSEUR DE LA MOTTE CURATORIAL ESSAY
Photoscape: Capturing the Real & Surreal
11 sordid, but in general, "subjects are explicable in terms of natural causation without resort to supernatural or divine intervention" (Morris, 2003, p.5). The 50 photoworks selected combine several genres: landscape (including cityscape), portrait, humanscape (environmental portrait), genre scene, street photography, and still life. Furthermore, a variety of genres are used for the purpose of environmental, social, political and individual investigations. Landscape photographs may be seen as an immersion in the natural environment that occasionally offers poetic views, as in Picturesque Scenery by artist Zhou Wei (picture 1). And yet beyond the bucolic vision and obvious references to traditional landscape painting known as shanshui hua where water elements, landforms, architecture and human beings are featured in harmony, the reality shown by Zhou Wei is one of serious pollution in modern China. The smog, abandoned factories, grounded boats betray the loss of the balance between human activity and nature. Also addressing this theme of the loss of balance, the works Façade (Hirohito Nomoto, picture 2) and Imagining Flood (Miti Ruangkritya, picture 3) show nature overpowering the human in the recent devastating tsunamis, earthquakes and floods in Japan and Thailand.
Introduction Photoscape presents a rich overview of 50 bodies of works selected for the 3 rd Singapore International Photography Festival in 2012. It is a virtual escape into the world of photography, with its diversity of aesthetics, themes and concepts. It is also an open invitation to image exploration and discovery. What is a Photograph? A photograph may be defined as a visual sequence taken out of its context at a specific moment in time; an image that the photographer found appealing and worth capturing for its aesthetic, visual strength, interpretative or symbolic capacity. A priori, photo taking seeks objectivity. The photographer aims to present a glimpse of truth — a neutral perception of reality. Photo taking is a visual and accurate record of the real world that is directly observed and instantaneously captured by the camera. This understanding greatly informs disciplines such as photojournalism, documentary photography and street photography. Occasionally the photographer may wish to enhance the visual rendering of a photograph. In accentuating or changing details of the image, such as its colour, contrast, crop, exposure and so on, the photographer introduces subjectivity to the original photograph. This intervention, made possible with tools such as digital editing software,
may be carried out for aesthetic purposes. In contrast to the idea of objectivity in photo taking, there are photoworks in which subjectivity supersedes reality. The photographer is no longer an image-taker but an image-maker, suggesting a new layer beyond reality towards the surreal. The desired visual is produced by direct intervention on the object, or by technical or digital manipulation on the photograph. The final work presents a distortion of reality that can vary from a simple re-arrangement (where the original object is still recognisable) to a full abstraction. To some extent, art and conceptual photography proceeds from the idea of re-creation. But even if the image produced looks unreal or fantastic, it originates from a reality that is first captured on camera. Indeed, reality, either faithfully recorded or visually challenged, remains the essence of the photograph since its advent in the 19 th century. Picturing the Real Reality may be defined in various ways: it is the state of things as they are, an appeal for common sense, an attempt to depict subjects as they are considered to exist in accordance with secular or empirical rules. As an ideology, reality refers to an objective state, a search for truth, authenticity or accuracy. In the photographic process, the main task is observation, which then leads to the act of photo taking. In a more specific approach, photography tends to emphasise the ugly or the
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Between landscape and cityscape, Stage (Shen Chao-Liang, picture 4) employs a traditional documentary approach in photographing stage trucks used by itinerant performing groups all around Taiwan. Besides the documentary aspect, the images also tend towards a more contemporary mode of photography in the deliberate exclusion of people to enhance the feel of fantasy created by these stage trucks. Cityscape photography plays an important role in the depiction of modern society. In Burning Chrome, Norihisa Hosaka (picture 5) shoots Tokyo at night in order to capture the beauty of the city illuminated by electric light. Black and white photos reinforce the aesthetic relation between the two main subjects, namely the lights and the city. However, after the tragedy of Fukushima in 2011, the underlying message of the series is that the lights of modern cities and the prosperity they symbolise, powered as they are by nuclear energy, are under constant threat. In a more intimate vision, City of Home (Alina Kisina, picture 6), documents sequences of daily life in the artist's hometown of Kiev. Superimposing indoor/private and outdoor/public elements on the same image, the series is a kind of invitation to look beyond physicality and to share personal feelings and memory through urban architecture. Whereas big cities are more confronted by global
issues, new social realities impact other parts of any given country as well. In Travelling to the Outskirts, Cyrus Cornut (picture 7) documents French suburbs to show the paradox between their social purpose (extra housing for cities in expansion) and tangible failures (isolated areas, ghettos, massive deteriorating architecture). Painting Over the Present (Graeme Williams, picture 8) depicts the harsh realities of urban environments occupied by some of South Africa's poorest people. But unlike Cornut's series, a sense of hope and life is delicately suggested by the presence of colourful elements that witness a claim to aesthetics and identity. Looking further into abandoned architectures, Tomorrow Never Knows (Reginald Van de Velde, picture 9) seeks tracks of human beings in a background of nostalgia and past splendour. Portrait photographs generally address identity, human behaviour, relationships or social issues. Showcasing a series of individual portraits, The Last Tattooed Women of Kalinga (Jake Verzosa, picture 10) emphasises the loss of tradition in our world and the effect of this loss on the identity of people, specifically those living in the mountainous province of Kalinga in the Philippines. The question of identity is raised in a more optimistic way in My Face My Story (Renz Hu Qiren, picture 11). Based on the Chinese tradition of face reading, the series presents a study of the impact of genes, memory, life experiences, and inner feelings on faces. Often hidden in the lines of a face, these characteristics differentiate individuals from others. In parallel to this, The Guilty (Ji Hyun Kwon, picture 12) proposes an alternative to face reading; inner feelings that are usually hidden are revealed by the writing on the faces of the individuals. Facial expressions may also reveal a state of mind or a spiritual dimension as seen in Breath (Tran Viet Van, picture 13) that depicts individual portraits of Buddhist monks adopting the same meditation posture. In the series Into The Silence, Hermits of the Third Millennium (Carlo Bevilacqua, picture 14) individual portraits enhance the spiritual and religious aspects of human behaviour. Family relationships may be evoked using small photo formats, as in A Healing Device (Sean Lee, picture 15) in which the artist uses a photo album to insert intimate portraits of mother and father, including written comments as in a diary. Also using the photo album, Tribes (Lucia Herrero, picture 16) includes group photos of family and friends at the beach. The photographs reference both anthropological and travel photography, while making a statement on the Western middle class. In contrast, The Relevancy of Restricted Things (Nge Lay, picture 17) showcases portraits of Burmese families from the traditional countryside. To underscore the social role of the father
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PATRICIA LEVASSEUR DE LA MOTTE CURATORIAL ESSAY as head of the family, he is always featured in a sitting position. Family and social recognition are explored in CIna MEDan = Medanese Chinese (Willis Turner Henry, picture 18). In this series of self-portraits together with performance, the artist addresses her personal experience in exploring issues of dual ethnicity, belonging, and alienation. Likewise combining photography and performance, Buddhist Bug Project (Anida Yoeu Ali, photography by Masahiro Sugano, picture 19) is an autobio graphical exploration of identity; the Bug comes from artist Anida Yoeu Ali's own spiritual turmoil and tension between Islam and Buddhism.
Nolte Maldonado, picture 27). Democracy, as one possible system of government, is explored in both Life Under Democracy (Dale Yudelman, picture 28) and Singaplural (Zakaria Zainal, picture 29). While the former examines the consequences of democracy in the lives of ordinary citizens after Apartheid in South Africa, the latter documents the involvement of citizens in elections, a fundamental feature of a democracy. At another level, Some Desire in the Wings (Flore-Aël Surun, picture 30) records riot events that portray citizens in conflict as they aspire and act to defend liberty and freedom.
Humanscapes are photographs of a person in his or her surroundings in an environmental portrait. Both the person and the environment, by virtue of their relation and interaction, bear the full meaning of the photograph and shall not be dissociated. Theatrum Mundi (Manuel Vazquez , picture 20 ) describes the transit of crowds in the public spaces of global cities. More or less subconsciously submitted to the recording of surveillance cameras, city dwellers have become unknown actors and spectators. With more personal points of view, both Chinese Sentiment (Shen Wei, picture 21) and Poetic Melancholy (Shen Linghao, picture 22) examine the intimate perception and perspective of the city through private and public spaces in modern China. The booming economy of China is an area of study for photographers who record the rapid development of lifestyles and the difficult transition from traditional to global values. THEY (Zhang Xiao, picture 23) showcases citizens and workers as people who either witness, undergo or suffer the changes imposed by the global economy. Investigating this further, Traces (Ian Teh, picture 24) considers the origins of the economic growth that can be found in the wonton exploitation of natural resources. Ian Teh documents industrial landscapes using large panoramas, contrasting this with smaller triptychs of migrant workers living and working in those punishing environments. But a growing economy does not benefit everyone, as illustrated in Tropical Gift, Oil and Gas in Nigeria (Christian Lutz, picture 25). The artist explores economic and social disparities by juxtaposing portraits of the few beneficiaries of the growth against the bulk of the population still living in poverty. Besides these witnesses of the new realities created by economic development, there are victims directly impacted by these changes, as seen in After 12 (Kim Hak, picture 26). This series looks at homelessness and the poverty that forces people to sleep in the streets of Phnom Penh. And yet, there are local communities that resist the rules imposed by global economics, and manage to maintain harmony with their surroundings. This is highlighted in the Peruvian photo series SHAWI: Mystery with a Name of its Own (Musuk
At the boundary between the Real and Surreal are photographs that challenge the eyes of viewers and their perceptions of reality, should they seek a deeper meaning beyond the visual. The eye of the viewer is challenged in Land Ends (Melissa Moore, picture 31) where the artist herself plays a chameleon in order to showcase poeticised images that explore an intimate and symbiotic relationship between body and landscape. Another chameleon device is used in Anonymous Women: Draped (Patty Carroll, picture 32). It describes a rather pessimistic but light-hearted vision of the condition of housewives, their lack of identity, and their becoming invisible in the home. Besides the eye, the viewer's mind may also be challenged by the suggestive power of the image. In The Struggle to Right Oneself (Kerry Skarbakka, picture 33), the human body, as a tangible element of the real, seems to defy gravity in different situations. The photographs raise questions regarding the laws of physics: is the body flying or falling? Staying within the genre of self-portraiture, If there is something strange about me, I am not aware of it (Joel Yuen, picture 34) intellectually challenges our references to race, culture and tradition, with the artist performing a simulacrum of ritual dance while wearing primitive-looking costumes. Whereas the aforementioned series challenge our perception of reality without recourse to overt photo manipulation techniques, the following series include photographs that have been wrought to present distorted realities. Employing what at first sight appears to be documentary photography, Vision of Taiwan (Wu Cheng Chang, picture 35) aims to unveil the unbalanced relation between human beings and nature. The artist represents himself in the landscape as a witness, but uses the artifice of a flash, over- exposed to erase his face, as a way to criticise the blindness and inaction of human beings facing ecological disaster. Slow Down… Breathe… Only This Life (Justin Maxon, picture 36) presents photographs
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PHOTOSCAPE: CAPTURING THE REAL AND SURREAL produced by multiple exposures, that is the superimposition of two or more exposures to create a single image. In Emotion/Untold Stories (Htet T San, picture 37), each image reveals a genre scene embellished with a dream-like vision enhanced by editing processes such as colour adjustment and blur effects. Using dramatic lighting and colour editing, Us Alone (Laura Stevens, picture 38) pushes the simulacrum by using actual couples in their living spaces in posed situations of boredom. The constructed narratives aim to challenge our naïve conceptions of loving couples, as seen in vernacular photos. Picturing the Surreal Picturing the surreal is about transforming, re visiting, transgressing, and transcending reality that ends up appearing unreal. Fiction supersedes reality. What characterises the surreal? Well, perhaps it is the interpolation of elements of surprise in the image, disorientation, incongruous/ unexpected juxtapositions, an irrational or ap parent lack of meaning (non sequitur) that may lead to abstraction, a visual tendency to absurdity to the point of being humorous or confusing, or else a fantastic, hallucinatory or dream-like imagery. Surreal images are wholly subjective and refer to the photographer's own interpretation of things, disclosing emotional, intellectual and spiritual perceptions (or misperceptions). The resulting image appears like a distorting mirror. In terms of technical execution, surreal imagemaking often requires extensive physical transformation or digital manipulation. Thus landscapes may turn into dreamscapes or mindscapes. In Come With Me (Ellie Davis, picture 39), the introduction of artificial paths to the woodland floor reveals the "constructed" nature of landscapes, with particular reference to the long tradition of landscape painting and its role in the creation of meaning and in mythmaking. Painting serves also as a basis for Silence/Shapes (Filippo Minelli, picture 40) in which smoke bombs evoke the overtones of 19 th century impressionist landscapes — personal imagination encounters collective image culture. Landscape stimulates the photographer's imagination and while this is not actually tangible, it does have a bearing on the photographs produced. Sometimes explanations are needed to get a full sense of what is expressed. For example, Delights in my Garden (Lola Guerrera, picture 41) intro duces origami figures to simulate animals and plants within a natural setting, thus expressing the volatility and the ephemeral nature of everything around us, be it from nature or culture. In recOllection (Olivia Marty, picture 42), old photographic materials are projected on various urban surfaces and recaptured through the lens. The projections are layers of memory confronting
the present in a nostalgic and ghostly setting. Showcasing highly stylised and symbolic pictures, Dominion (Wawi Navarozza, picture 43) is a fabricated emotional space in which the concept supersedes image -taking. Fictionscape is, somewhat, about picturing fictive narratives or recreated genre scenes. Playing on the ambiguity between fact and fiction, Suburban Memories (Bronek Kozka, picture 44) features constructed images in which actors and models act out a series of stories created from storyboards, just like in television shows. Recreated genre scenes can be seen in Relationships (Arnold Reinisch, picture 45) where cynical and absurd anthropomorphic sculptures, together with real individuals in living interiors, examine relationship issues such as male attitudes toward household chores. Supernaturalscapes deal with what is perceived as inexplicable, mysterious or cabalistic. Theatre of Silence (Arturo Betancourt, picture 46) evokes ghostly images of women in alternate realities; they are metaphors and vanishing traces of women victims, illusions that appear to navigate between the unreal and memory. The images purposely unsettle the viewer. The Sleeping Arm (Marlous van der Sloot, picture 47) and Inquisitive Investigations (Kee Ya Ting, picture 48) both use the technique of photomontage, thereby amalgamating absurd or unreal elements.
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Beyond interpretations and re-created pictures, spiritualscapes potentially explore unsolved questions of faith and religion. Acts of Faith (Fernando Montiel Klimt, picture 49) recreates realities in which individuals in absurd settings seem in search of introspection and faith. The photographs come from a mental construction using humour as a discourse and as an act of freedom. Using both mental and physical constructions, Tales of Moving Mountains: Why Won't God Go Away? (Tristan Cai, picture 50 ) is a juxtaposition of pictured elements that seem more or less related in terms of subject matter and display space. This photo-installation purposely lets the viewer question the existence of God. Conclusion The 2012 SIPF showcases a diversity of approaches and themes that allow different keys of lecture — looking at the real and surreal being one among others. The aim of the festival is not about categorising the works under one point of view, rather it is a curatorial perspective. The variety of essays as well as the exhibition displays offer paths of interpretations that readers and visitors can follow freely. Art, including photography, gives space for debate and critique. One can argue for example that reality in terms of objectivity does not exist in photography as the photo -
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PATRICIA LEVASSEUR DE LA MOTTE CURATORIAL ESSAY grapher operates a subjective selection of the image to be taken: Why this image more than another? Is this image more truthful? Under which criteria? Since its advent in the 19 th century, photography has often suffered comparisons with painting: sharing genres (landscape, portrait and so on) and trends (pictorialism where photography "imitates" the aesthetics of painting, and hyperrealism where painting "imitates" photography). But the easier access of photography — everyone can take photographs — and the closer relationship to the real world make photography a popular and powerful medium employed in communication, information and art. And yet there is a gap between the simple photo taking that everybody can do and the art of taking/ making images. Technical rigour and creativity distinguish the artist-photographer. Using single pictures, series or narratives, art photography may showcase realities and beyond, visions of dreams, fears or simple thoughts; it can reveal beauty in dramas, reveal symbols in sceneries, and beyond the image, allow the expression of ideas or of critique. Image reading may be either simple or complex, challenging viewers with their own perceptions, feelings and experiences. Indeed photography has taken an increasingly important place as the key media of contemporary art practice, and has transcended borders and cultures. The 2012 SIPF is an invitation to a visual and cross-cultural journey. The exhibition is a physical and mental construction of images offering multiple dialogues among works from all over the world, as well providing a wide overview on general and contemporary matters. It is a platform for sharing visions of contemporary concerns and the world we live in.
References Bowie, Andrew, Aesthetics and Subjectivit y: From Kant to Nietzsche (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990) Campany, David, Art and Photography (London: Phaidon, 2003) Criqui, Jean- Pierre (…) , L'Image - Document, entre Realite et Fiction ( Paris : Le Bal, 2010 ) Jaeger, Anne - Celine, Image Makers Image Takers ( London: Thames & Hudson, 2007) Jeffrey, Ian, How to Read a Photograph ( London: Thames & Hudson, 2008) Morris, Pam, Realism ( London: Taylor & Francis, 2003) Rainbow Asia, exhibition catalogue, Seoul Arts Center (Seoul : Hangaram Art Museum, 2010 )
PHOTOSCAPE: CAPTURING THE REAL AND SURREAL
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Patricia Levasseur de la Motte (France/Singapore) earned an MA in Museology and an MRes in Art History (Asian Arts) from the Ecole du Louvre, Paris. She then worked as a Research Assistant at the National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet, Paris. In her former role as Assistant Curator for Photography and New Media at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), she curated and co-curated several exhibitions including Alain Fleischer, Time Exposures, SAM (2008), TRANSPORTASIAN: Visions of Contemporary Photography from Southeast Asia, SAM (2009); Rainbow Asia, Seoul Arts Center, Hangaram Museum (2010); and Video, an Art, a History 1965-2010: a Selection from the Centre Pompidou and Singapore Art Museum collections, SAM (2011). She has contributed to several essays and reviews for exhibition catalogues and international publications. She is presently an independent curator, working on The Philanthropic Museum, an online database project dedicated to photography and new media art.
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ZENG HAN CURATORIAL ESSAY
关于当代摄影 的几个问题 Questions on Contemporary Photography
17 景观摄影的可能性 景观摄影可以说是近年来最炙手可热的风潮，从 1966 年在美国 George Eastman House 举办的 " Contemporary Photographers: Toward a Social Landscape " 开始，到 19 75 年同样在 George Eastman House 举办的 "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape" ，再到 以 Hilla & Bernd Becher 开创的杜塞尔多夫学派，再 到 Stephen Shore, Joel Stern feld 等人的新彩色摄 影，从20世纪末发展到 21世纪初的现今已蔚为大观。 尤其是 Becher 的 3 位学生 Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth 在近年来屡屡创出摄影作品 拍卖天价，从而让更多以摄影为创作媒介的艺术家们 更加对景观摄影趋之若鹜。 景观摄影的大行其道，与这个后工业时代的发展密切 相关，这届 S I P F 投稿及最后入选的作品中景观数量 庞大，而且不仅仅有来自欧美的，亚洲和拉丁美洲的 也为数不少，可以说是在这一摄影类型上已经全球 化。 以德国和美国摄影师为主的西方摄影师的景观摄影，
2012 新加坡国际摄影节采用无主题的 Open Call 其实是很冒险的行为，因为摄影的面貌从来没有象现 在这个时代这样极其复杂和不确定，作为被淹没在这 片照片海洋中的策展人，我试图屏住呼吸浮出海面， 让自己能透过这么多优秀的摄影作品的表象去思考一 些正在发生的当代摄影的问题。 从真实与非真实，到超真实 摄影从诞生以来就没有停止过真实和非真实的争论， 正如 Andre Bazin 所说的摄影是“一种真实的幻觉”， 正是这种与真实之间的暧昧而复杂的关系让摄影得以 区别于其他艺术媒介而独立。 即便是以追求世界真相为目的的“纪实摄影— Documentary Photography ”在经过一个世纪的发展后的 今天，也不甘于仅仅停留在简单记录的层面。从这次 入选 S I P F 的纪实摄影作品可以看出，戏剧化、电 影化似乎正在成为纪实摄影的新趋势，例如 Carlo
Bevilacqua — Into The Silence Hermits Of The Third Millenium 和 Christian Lutz — Tropical Gift, Oil and Gas in Nigeria ； 将现实通过摄影“超现实”化也是 许多新纪实摄影师喜欢的拍摄方式，例如 Flore-Aël Surun — some desire in the wings 和 Dale Yudelman — Life Under Democracy 。 当然，记录真实对于成长于全球化媒体化网络化时代 的新生代摄影师来说早已不是头等要事，用摄影建构 自己的真实是他们的选择。因为在当下这个后现代的 新世纪，我们无时不刻无处不在地被媒体 (media) 被 网络 (internet) 包围，“ 影像不再让人想象现实，因为 它就是现实。影像也不再能让人幻想实在的东西，因
为它就是虚拟的实在。” Jean Baudrillard 所描绘的 “超真实 (hyperreality) ”已然成为我们身处其中的现 实。作为现实世界最直接的观察者和思考者，新一代 的摄影师又将自己所处的这个“超真实”时代作出如 何的追问和回应呢？像泰国摄影师 Miti Ruangkrtya — Imagining Flood ，新加坡摄影师 Zakaria Zainal — Singaplural ，正是对此作出的反省和批判。 身份、关系、文化属性 在新加坡这样的一个国家举办摄影节，其本身就是一 件极富象征和隐喻的艺术行为。不管是文化、政治、 经济、信仰，新加坡就像通往各个道路方向的立交 桥，各种冲突和差异都在这里汇集交错。东方与西 方，民主和集权，中心与边缘，保守与激进，全球化 和后殖民，我从未见过哪个摄影节可以通过摄影讨论 如此庞杂的论题，也许是因为有来自各大洲几十个国 家的摄影师提交他们的作品，也许是因为我们几位策 展人也来自不同国家和不同文化背景。 也许就是在这样的一种氛围中，最终入选的50 组作品 中，主题涉及身份、关系、文化属性的作品占了很大 比例。这其中有关于探讨如何确认自我身份的，如
Willis Turner Henry — CIMED (CIna MEDan = Medanese Chinese)； 有关于性别身份的思考的，如 Patty Carroll — Anonymous Women: Draped；有关 于亲密关系的演绎的，如 Lee Puay Yang Sean — A Healing Device 和 Laura Stevens — Us Alone； 有关于个体与社会关系的困惑，如 Zhang Xiao — THEY ；有反思个体与宗教的关系的，如 Tristan Cai — Tales of Moving Mountains: Why Won't God Go Away? 和 Fernando Montiel Klint — Acts of Faith。
大部分还是沿袭杜塞尔多夫学派和美国新地形的冷静 而客观的 Deadpan 的摄影手法，他们的景观摄影通 常会加上“社会的”和“批判的”的这样的定语，例 如 Cyrus Cornut — Travelling to the outskirts 、 Reginald Van de Velde — Tomorrow Never Knows 。 但让我看到景观摄影的新的可能性的作品，反而更多 的是来自亚洲。例如菲律宾的 Wawi Navarroza — Dominion ，她将实地拍摄的火山灰、岩石、星空和 用布制作成的“仿自然风景”并置在一起，从自身生 存的环境去思考人类深层意识与自然的关系。中国的 周伟 (Zhou Wei) 的《风景旧曾谙》用过期胶卷和老 式相机试图去拍出试图记忆中的山水 (ShanShui) ，那 些颇具中国传统山水画意味的风景照片中突兀的人造 景观已取代天人合一的美景，中国山水画并不仅仅为 了描绘风景，更是超越了它的物质性而成为思考和理 解自然宇宙的一种哲学途径，周伟的创作也是在尝试 摄影在这方面的可能性。而来自台湾的沈昭良 (Shen Chao-Liang) 的《 Stag e 》 虽然运用了类型学的方式 去拍摄台湾民间的移动舞台，但他并没像西方摄影师 那样恪守冷酷而精密的类型学摄影规则，而是用色彩 饱和的反转胶片将原本就异常浓烈的现实色彩渲染得 更加妖娆和疯狂，将拍摄对象的静止和图像色彩的躁 动形成一种东方式的二维辩证思考。而另一位也来自 台湾的 Wu Cheng Chang 的《台灣「美景」Vision of Taiwan》，曾将行为艺术、摆拍 (stage) 融入景观摄 影，再运用长时曝光、过度曝光、多次闪灯等摄影技 术，将传统的“天人合一”的精神探讨重新定义个人 与环境的关系。 在今天，仍想用简单的东方西方的来划分是不合理 的，全球化虽然消弭了东西方的界限，但在另一方面 还是促进不同文化的融合和兼容。在我看来，来自欧 洲的 Ellie Davies — Come with Me 、 Lola Guerrera — Delights in My Garden 这样的景观摄影，更像是 一种摄影的东方式美学和思辨。
2 012 ，是一个被赋予太多象征和隐喻的年份，在新 加坡展出的如此多元而丰富的摄影作品似乎也在应和 着 2 012 这样一个特殊的符号所指。虽然当代艺术越 来越不局限于单一的媒介和方法，但摄影仍然有着其
独立和区别于其他艺术门类的本体语言特性。人类社 会的发展愈来愈符号化和影像化，摄影正当其时，而 且技术的高速更新也让摄影的外延不断扩张，未来的 可能性也许更值得我们应该关注和期待。
It is risky business for the Singapore International Photography Festival 2012 to launch an Open Call for photography without setting a theme; this genre had never been as complex and uncertain as now. Appointed curator of the Open Call Showcase, I was drowning in the sea of photographs that came in. I held my breath, poured through mounds of excellent photographic works, made my way to the surface, and in the process reflected on the conundrums that contemporary photography faced today. Traversing Reality and Unreality to Hyper-reality The debate on reality in photography had never ceased since the day it was created. As Andre Bazin tells us, photography is "a realistic illusion", and it is indeed such ambiguity and complexity that distinguishes it from the other forms of art. Even documentary photography, which aims at the pursuit of truth, no longer dwells on simply chronicling an event. Judging from the selected works of the SIPF this year, it seems that documentary photography is becoming dramatic and film-like. Examples include Carlo Bevilacqua's Into the Silence: Hermits of the Third Millenium and Christian Lutz's Tropical Gift, Oil and Gas in Nigeria. The transformation of reality to hyperreality in photography is also a new trend among photographers, exemplified by Flore-Aël Surun's Some Desire in the Wings and Dale Yudelman's Life Under Democracy. Clearly, the documentation of reality is no longer the most important issue in mind for the generation that grew up in the era of globalisation and widespread use of media and Internet. The construction of realities unique to themselves through photography is a choice of their own. In the post-modern era today, we are endlessly and inescapably surrounded by the media and Internet. Images, as Jean Baudrillard contends, no longer invoke imagination of the reality, for it is itself the reality; Images are also no longer able to create illusions of the real, for it is itself the virtual reality. His description of the hyper-reality is the reality in which we now belong. How would the new generation of photographers, as the ones who directly observe and deliberate in the real world, seek to question and respond in this era of the hyper-reality? Thai photo-
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ZENG HAN CURATORIAL ESSAY grapher Miti Ruangkrtya's Imagining Flood and Singaporean photographer Zakaria Zainal's Singapura! are reflections and criticisms of such.
these works are not just from the West, many are also from Asia and Latin America. This is the globalisation of landscape photography.
Identities, Relationships and Cultural Attributes Organising a photography festival in a place like Singapore is itself a richly symbolic and metaphorical artistic behaviour. Be it culture, politics, economics or religion, Singapore is the crossroads where differences and conflicts intersect. The east and the west, democracy and authoritarianism, the central and the marginal, the conservative and the radical, globalisation and post-colonialism; I have never come across a photography festival that is able to discuss topics of a range as wide as this. This is probably due to the participation of photographers from quite a number of countries, or it could also be due to the different nationalities and cultural backgrounds of the curators.
The leading landscape photographers today are mainly German and American photographers who largely follow the calm and objective Deadpan photographic techniques of the Dusseldorf school of thought. They usually define their works using words like "social" and "critical", exemplified by Cyrus Cornut's Travelling to the Outskirts and Reginald van de Velde's Tomorrow Never Knows. Novel variations of landscape photography, however, are more commonly created in Asia instead. An example would be Dominion by Wawi Navarroza from the Philippines. She captured photographs of volcanic ash, rocks and skies on site, and juxtaposed the images with a cloth-made "imitation of the natural scenery". It is an attempt to deliberate the relationship between one's deep consciousness and the nature, deriving from the direct environment where one lives in. In his work Picturesque Scenery, China's Zhou Wei used expired films and old-style cameras to capture the Shanshui sceneries (literally the sceneries of mountains and rivers) of his memories. His landscape photographs encompass elements of traditional Chinese paintings, but the presence of man-made structures has struck a discordant note in what had been a harmonious integration between man and nature. Chinese landscape paintings are not simply a depiction of sceneries, but a deliberation and understanding of nature, a philosophy beyond materiality. Zhou Wei's work is an attempt to test the possibilities of photography in this respect.
An atmosphere of such is a likely reason that a large portion of the final selection involved themes about identity, relationships and cultural attributes. Amongst these include the search and affirmation of self-identity, such as CIMED (CIna MEDan = Medanese Chinese) by Willis Turner Henry; the deliberation of gender identity, such as Anonymous Women: Draped by Patty Carroll; the deduction of intimate relationships, such as A Healing Device by Lee Puay Yang Sean and Us Alone by Laura Stevens; the perplexities of the relationship between an individual and the society, such as THEY by Zhang Xiao; there is also the reflection of the relationship between the individual and religion, such as Tales of Moving Mountains: Why Won't God Go Away by Tristan Cai and Acts of Faith by Fernando Montiel Klint. The Possibilities of Landscape Photography Landscape photography is arguably the most popular form of photography in recent years, beginning from the "Contemporary Photographers: Toward a Social Landscape" exhibition held in the George Eastman House of the United States in 1966 to the "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape", also organised in the same museum in 1975, further on to the Dusseldorf school of thought created by Hilla & Bernd Becher, and subsequently to the new colour photography used by photographers such as Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld. The development since the end of the 20 th century is spectacular, in particular the works by Becher's students (Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky & Thomas Struth) that were auctioned at whopping prices, prompting a scramble for landscape photography among other photography artists.
As for Shen Chao-Liang from Taiwan, his work Stage uses typology as an approach to capture the Taiwanese mobile stage. However, his approach differs from other western photographers in that he does not strictly abide by the cold precision of the rules of typology; rather, he makes use of the saturated colours of the reversal films to create an even more enchanting and unbridled effect, building on the original colours that were already unusually strong to begin with. The combination of a static subject and a variety of restless colours created an oriental-styled dialectical thinking. Also from Taiwan, Wu Cheng Chang encompassed not only performance art and staged photography in his work Vision of Taiwan; he also used techniques such as long-exposure, overexposure and multipleflash. This is a complete redefinition of the relation ship between man and nature, setting it apart from the traditional Chinese philosophy of man being an integral part of nature.
The popularity of landscape photography is closely related to the development in the post-industrialisation era. A large number landscape photography works had been selected in SIPF this year, and
Today, the East/West binary opposition is way too simplified and unreasonable. Globalisation has blurred the division between the East and the West, and it is also promoting intermixture and tolerance
关于当代摄影的几个问题
QUESTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY
between cultures. In my opinion, certain works of landscape photography from Europe, such as Come With Me by Ellie Davies and Delights in my Garden by Lola Guerrera, seem very much oriental in terms of aesthetics and critical thinking. Fraught with symbolic and metaphoric speculation, is the year 2012 such that the numerals is symbolic in itself and exhibiting such diverse photographic works in Singapore seems particularly at this time. It is undeniable that contemporary art is enjoying multi-disciplinary and multi-platform freedom, as never before, yet photography remains an art form whose basic characteristics are independent and distinct from other mediums of art. As our society continues to arc towards symbols and visuals, it is evident that photography has come into its time, riding onto the super-highway of technology, with a future that is looking far more worthy of our attention and anticipation.
Zeng Han (China) is an independent curator and photographer born 1974 in Guangdong, China. He started out as a photojournalist at New Express from 1998 to 2000, was photographer and editor at the 21st CENTURY BUSINESS HERALD in 2000, and the Director of photography at City Pictorial from 2001 to 2008. Zeng Han is currently the founder & director of Authentic Vision, and is based in Guangzhou, China. Zeng Han has curated an impressive number of photography exhibitions to date, which include the exhibitions Invisible City: photography exhibition at Star Photography Gallery in Shanghai, Dark Corner: Feng Li solo exhibition in 2006, and CHINESCAPE: Contemporary Chinese Landscape Photography Exhibition, Times Museum, Guangzhou, China in 2010. He was invited to curate at the 1st Lianzhou International Photo-graphy Exhibition, Lianzhou, China in 2005, and the 3 rd Dali International Photography Festival, Dali, China in 2011, and was awarded the Best Curator Prize at both festivals. Zeng Han has participated in the 2009 Photo Global, Artist residency program, School of Visual Arts, New York, USA and has held exhibitions for his works since 2000. His most recent exhibition "China Now!" was held in 2011 at the Nina Torres Fine Art gallery in Miami, USA.
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Special Projects Showcase
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STUART FRANKLIN, MARK POWER & JACOB AUE SOBOL OUTSIDE IN: A MAGNUM PHOTOS SHOWCASE
The Sound of Two Songs © Mark Power/Magnum Photos
One thing which even the most seasoned and discerning masters of the art of choice do not and cannot choose, is the society to be born into — and so we are all in travel, whether we like it or not. — Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman
The Stranger and the Host. The Self and the Other. The Insider and the Outsider. Outside In is a contemplation of these ever-changing dualities by three photographers from Magnum Photos. Embarking on separate journeys of great intensity and intimacy, they sought to capture the physical and emotional landscapes of worlds previously unknown to them. Stuart Franklin lends an analytical eye to the scars mankind has inflicted on our land. Maintaining his stance as an outsider, he meticulously collects evidence of climate change in Europe. From negative aspects such as thinning glaciers in Austria, to positive stories of green energy and cleaner cities, his riveting pictures are not merely physical records of nature but depictions of human nature in its essence — that man is equally capable of creation and destruction. On the other extreme, the lines between outsider and insider blur dramatically in Jacob Aue Sorbol's visceral vignettes of urban Tokyo. Having moved there in 2006 with his girlfriend, he turned to photography to quell the overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness in a foreign culture that seemed impenetrable. Driven by intuition and fervour to make the city his own, he sidestepped the glittering façade of the bustling metropolis for the private domain of the individual presence. Composed in a resolutely neutral and distanced tone, is Mark Power's Polish project The Sound of Two Songs. Travelling the length and breadth of Poland, Power depicted in beautiful depth and lyricism, a fascinating period of transition in the country's history after it joined the European Union in 2004. But it was not only a physical voyage but an internal one as well. Initially clinging onto picturing the new European prospect, he stepped back to enjoy what was truly important — the process of observing and photographing. Instead of establishing photography as a window into the external world, all three have turned their gazes inwards by suggesting that the open window, is simply really directed towards our souls, illuminating the core of humanity and what makes us human. Set at the heart of this showcase is also an ageold question: 'Insider or outsider — who is better positioned to document society?'
1 Colour
In association with:
Exhibition Partner: 15%
70%
35%
100%
Supported by:
25 STUART FRANKLIN, MARK POWER & JACOB AUE SOBOL OUTSIDE IN: A MAGNUM PHOTOS SHOWCASE
I, Tokyo © Jacob Aue Sobol/Magnum Photos
Footprints: Our Landscape in Flux © Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
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THOMAS SAUVIN SILVERMINE Beijing Silvermine started in May 2009 out of my meeting with a man called Xiaoma, who works in a recycling zone north of town, where part of the city's garbage ends up. Over there, some specialize in plastics, some in beer bottle caps, but he solely concentrates on trash containing silver nitrate, which essentially means hospital X-rays, CD-roms, but also negative film. Before drowning it all in a big pool of acid in order to collect this precious silver, he agreed to sell me negative film by the kilogram, and that's how the Beijing Silvermine project was born.
Thomas Sauvin is a photography collector and editor based in China. Since 2006 he exclusively works as a consultant for The Archive of Modern Conflict, for whom he tirelessly collects Chinese works, from contemporary photography to period publications to anonymous photography. A glimpse into this collection is presented in the photo book Happy Tonite published by AMC in 2010. Most recently, he started the Silvermine project, accumulating more than half a million of anonymous color negatives destined for destruction in a Beijing recycling zone. This archive was exhibited at the Dali Photo Festival (China), the Open City Museum in Brixen (Austria), Format Photo Festival (UK) and the Singapore International Photography Festival.
Ever since, I have been repeating this collecting process every month, and the archive now counts a little more than half a million negatives. These rice bags filled with thousands of rolls of slobbery, stinky, dusty, scratched, crumpled and humid negative film, have allowed me to access a highly codified visual universe, where the subject is always standing up straight at the center of the image, looking into the objective. In these photos, there is a paradox between this total absence of spontaneity on one hand, and on the other hand the inherent complicity between the photographer and the photographed; in China taking pictures is always a ritual, it always involves posing and necessarily consent. The results are these unpretentious, often quite funny, and undoubtedly endearing images. Beijing Silvermine is a unique photographic portrait of the capital and the life of its inhabitants following the Cultural Revolution. It covers a period of 20 years, from 1985, namely when silver film started being used massively in China, to 2005, when digital photography started taking over. These 20 years are those of China's economic opening, when people started prospering, travelling, consuming, having fun. While reviewing this archive several times, I was constantly looking for these few cliches which stand out in this artform that is souvenir photography. I'm thinking of a man sitting on a crescent moon made of stone looking out towards the city, or a woman in an apple green dress standing in the middle of a deadly fight between a shark and an octopus, or another hidden in a field of 15-feet-tall daisies. Also, a number of unexpected series naturally started standing out. For instance, at the end of the eighties, as Beijing households started modernizing, it was quite usual to be photographed next to your latest purchases‌ I therefore have a tremendous amount of portraits of people posing next to their refridgerator‌ With these photos we enter people's homes only to discover posters of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Sylvester Stallone‌ at a time when China is only starting to open up to the West. Through all these souvenir snapshots taken by the anonymous and everyday Chinese, we're in reality witnessing the birth of post-Socialist China.
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WANG QINGSONG THE HISTORY OF MONUMENTS Spanning 42 metres in length, The History of Monuments is a stunning interpretation of the history of mankind in a photo epic. Renowned for his compelling works that convey an ironic vision of 21st- century China's encounter with global consumer culture, contemporary photographer Wang Qingsong built a studio with life-size props over weeks, mobilising over 200 models to execute this laborious photography work.
Born in 1964, Wang Qingsong grew up in the Daqing oilfields in Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China, where his parents were employed. From a young age he set his sights on becoming an artist, although the path that he followed was hardly an easy one. When his father died in an oilfield accident and left his family without financial support, the 15-year-old boy immediately took his father's old place on a drilling platform and worked there for the next eight years, while continuing to take art classes and to seek admission to China's top art academies. Following his acceptance by the prestigious Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Wang Qingsong trained as an oil painter, graduating in 1992. Determined to make his way as an independent artist, he arrived in Beijing in 1993, just as Chinese contemporary art was beginning to attract international attention.
He first won recognition as a painter in the mid-1990s through his membership in the Gaudy Art group, a movement influenced by the work of Jeff Koons and championed by China's most influential art critic, Li Xianting. In 1997 he abandoned painting and took up photography, a medium that enabled him to quickly register and comment upon the economic and social changes that were sweeping China. His work has now appeared in more than 20 solo exhibitions and over 80 group exhibitions. He has exhibited internationally at venues such as the Sydney Biennale, the Gwangju Biennale, the Havana Biennial, the Getty Museum, the Hammer Museum, the Mori Art Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, ZKM Karlsruhe, the Moscow House of Photography, and MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. His work was prominently featured in the 2004 ICP exhibition Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China.
Detail from The History of Monuments by Wang Qingsong
WANG QINGSONG THE HISTORY OF MONUMENTS
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The 3rd SIPF Open Call Showcase
ALINA KISINA CITY OF HOME At first glance, Alina Kisina's photographic series City of Home might seem merely aimed at capturing the daily life of her hometown of Kiev, Ukraine. Yet these strangely evocative photographs are in fact less concerned with documentary impressions than with opening up the realms above and beyond the mundane images that define the surface of her work. The subway steps, skylines, façades, and factory lots depicted, resonate with an order that seems not of this world. The pictures — often quite literally — reflect environments that seem to exist side-by-side with or beyond the mere material givens of the everyday subject matter. Although superficially static, the serene, perfectly composed photographs actively lead us into sentiments that are uplifting and light. They let us transcend the materiality of everyday existence to enter into planes of experience heretofore unknown.
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ANIDA YOEU ALI BUDDHIST BUG PROJECT The Buddhist Bug is a fantastical saffron-coloured creature spanning the length of a 30-metre bridge, yet it can easily coil itself into an orange ball of loneliness. Rooted in an autobiographical exploration of identity, the Bug comes from the artist's own spiritual turmoil between Islam and Buddhism. Set amongst everyday people in ordinary moments, the Bug provokes obvious questions of belonging. It reflects the artist's personality and love for everyday culture, creating moments that transcend the ordinary. Consistent throughout this series is the unique combination of humour and otherness. In March 2012, the Bug travelled on a cyclo and remorque to various neighbourhoods in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, its birthplace, with the eventual goal of travelling to other locations relevant to its transnational hybrid identity. The Bug's ongoing journey is documented in this series of photographic stills and video.
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ARNOLD REINISCH RELATIONSHIPS For several years now, Arnold Reinisch has been creating the growing series of sculptures called Resurr Štion, that he uses chiefly to take photos of and make videos with. The series is an ironic and cynical review of topics related to biogenetic research and development. Part of the concept of the work done on these, in a sense, anthropo morphic sculptures, involves attempts to modify the household appliances, machines and tools to appear to be as much like individuals as possible. An 'arrangement of sculptures complemented by people' is how Arnold Reinisch describes Relationships, a successively growing series of photographs that commenced in 2011. The photographs depict men with their supposed mistresses, and question relationships, such as the male attitude towards daily housework. They are photographed in a studio with changing scenarios, built to resemble suburban living rooms.
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ARTURO BETANCOURT THEATRE OF SILENCE Theatre of Silence is an antithesis between the captive femininity and crime; the victims crimped by masks of silence. With the camera as a privileged eye, the artist delves into a world of barbarism entrenched in history and memory. The images reflect the cruel reality for victims whose lives have been altered or taken by a violent, faceless and insatiable beast. The ubiquitous woman is split in each viewer's imagination. Her soft and delicate postures existent but latent to the observer. Her face finds its expressions, as the viewer perceives it. Each image is a metaphor and an antithesis of the women distancing themselves without leaving a trace, placed in alternate realities and illusions that navigate between the unreal and the memory. Disruptive and disturbing, this series seeks to provoke thought with each of these forced removals, embedding in the viewers' minds the quiet desperation of these women and their fate.
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ARTURO BETANCOURT THEATRE OF SILENCE
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BRONEK KOZKA SUBURBAN MEMORIES The suburban landscape, be it outdoors or interiors, is the staging ground for Kozka's reenactments. Through elaborate tableaux photo graphs, he explores the theme of memory and remembered moments of growing up in suburbia by playing on the ambiguity of fact and fiction, and the ability to recall a scene or happening. These photographs are part truth and part myth, and they explore how memory can confuse, yet assure one's construct of a story. Often there is uncertainty in the images: is it night or day, dream or reality? Filmic references are utilised to create a dark and at times depraved construct of the spaces. In some images the characters are imbued with melancholic drama, loss, hopelessness, despair and a sense that they are operating on autopilot. In others, there is a sense of joy, fun and revelry. Assembled carefully in studio spaces or lit locations, the photographs are a series of stories acted out by a cast of actors and models. On one level, the photographs are a representation of a one -person-perspective of a remembered moment in time, but they also seek for the viewer to reconnect with their own memories and share in the commonalities, to use the image as a springboard into their own history.
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CARLO BEVILACQUA INTO THE SILENCE, HERMITS OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM Secular or religious, Catholic or Orthodox, followers of singular syncretism of Eastern religions and apocryphal Christian revelation or even shaman healers: these are the contemporary hermits. Hermits, far from disappearing, are a growing and fascinating phenomenon observed since the late eighties and have seen a steady increase in number in recent years. There are not many of them but their presence and their witness have a powerful and fascinating effect, even if their existence seems paradoxical in our society. They live sometimes isolated in small apartments in the heart of our cities, but most often by the side of woods and villages, building their own retreat, or in put-away old rectory and chapels that have previously fallen to pieces. The hermit does not withdraw because he failed to achieve a position in the world or for personal ambitions and we cannot speak of misanthropy. They are educated, almost all graduates, many are monks, priests or missionaries. Also, many are lay-people: architects, doctors, directors, writers and teachers. There are those who allow themselves to be photographed and those who do not grant an interview. Regardless, they all hold extraordinary stories and portraits of humanity from which the beauty of life flows.
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CARLO BEVILACQUA INTO THE SILENCE, HERMITS OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
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CHRISTIAN LUTZ TROPICAL GIFT, OIL AND GAS IN NIGERIA Nigeria produces an average of 2.5 million barrels of petroleum a day. The country ranks eighth among the world's crude oil exporters, and a tenth for our planet's natural gas reserves. The Nigerian government derives 75% of its revenues from the natural resources of the Niger Delta. 40% of the crude oil imported by the United States comes from Nigeria. Since the late 1950s, the equivalent of 9 million barrels of crude oil has been spilled into the Delta. A recent survey by the Nigerian authorities officially lists over 7000 oil slicks. An estimated over 90% of the Nigerian population lives on less than 2 US dollars a day. The populations of the Niger Delta have a life expectancy of 40 years. This photographic essay captures the closed world of those dealing with oil and gas in Nigeria. The result is a bitter statement laying bare the unequal power relations between the dominators and the dominated, a dark picture of how the overly abundant mineral resources of Africa are being exploited. The approach conveys a malaise born of the conse quences that the economic interests in question have on civil societies.
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CYRUS CORNUT TRAVELLING TO THE OUTSKIRTS As part of the F14 project about France and its territory, which brought together 14 photographers who exhibited at Arles in 2006, and in amicable response to Raymond Depardon's work on France, Cyrus Cornut presents Travelling to the Outskirts. In the rich diversity of France's landscapes, the suburbs remain 'anti-travel' zones, far from the image of romantic France. Built hastily and with short histories, they are dormitory towns rather than tourist areas, business zones rather than historical sites. Their constructions are neither part of a designed urban space, nor part of an urban framework. What emerges is a series of platonic solid shapes where public spaces seem cowardly and residual. Suburbs are the nerve centres for a country and Travelling to the Outskirts is thus an extraspection, the story of a real journey to the suburbs that, only yesterday, seemed as far away as some of the world's great cities.
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DALE YUDELMAN LIFE UNDER DEMOCRACY Inspired by Ernest Cole's exhibition — documenting life under apartheid in the 1960's — this series looks at life under democracy. The resulting series began in March 2011 and consists of vibrant daily reflections, shot in passing, with the simple motivation of noticing what is. In the course of bearing testament to the lives of fellow South Africans, people, events and objects became contemplative essays, manifestations of how the issues making front-page news permeate and become reality. The process of capturing these images was integral to maintaining an intrinsic honesty within each frame; instead of using bulky professional cameras, a technically undemanding cellphone camera is used. The resulting interaction between the subject and photographer is mostly informal and unobtrusive. Ironically, though produced relying on the latest technology, the requirement for these works go back to the fundamental principle of traditional photography — that of composition and engagement. The intermingling of contemporary practice and traditional precepts within this method of image-making echo a similar theme of the works, which alludes to the fact that as much as things change, they also remain the same.
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ELLIE DAVIES COME WITH ME Come with Me explores the artist's relationship with the landscape, its role in defining personal identity, and the notion that all perceptions of nature are mediated by culture. If all natural spaces are utilised, shaped, managed and farmed by Man, can we ever access the natural world on its own terms? Constructed within New Forest, the physicality and labour of the process is an important part of the art work. The artificial materials in the woodlands reflect the constructed nature of landscape, referencing the tradition of landscape painting. The pathways are made from materials such as paint, powder, wool and paper, referencing traditional craft processes. Each piece follows the most natural line of movement through space, tracing animal paths, the sweep of the eye, or the curve of the land. The colour, shape and material of each pathway mirrors the landscape, delicately and temporarily tracing a trajectory, allowing the artist to inscribe and locate herself within the landscape in order to develop a richer personal interaction with the woodland. These trajectories are imposed on the landscape, transforming the natural world into an object as well as a photographic image, an inscribed space that questions the stability of 'nature' and 'landscape' as concepts.
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FERNANDO MONTIEL KLINT ACTS OF FAITH We have become a society that atomises and isolates the individual. Co-dependence on technology has made us into individualistic beings eager to consume, in search of a seemingly ethereal pleasure. Instead of recognising and getting to know one another and in an organic way, we are supplanting human interaction with a virtual simulation of it, hence diminishing one's search for inner and psychic freedom. What is the meaning of the word faith? The artist explores the act of faith in contemporary life, without being bound to religion. This exploration acts as a form of mental liberation for the artist who generates absurd realities in scenes to be caught by the camera. It is a route towards introspection, contemplation and self-liberation, where infinity is revealed in moments of inspiration. It extends into the human consciousness where faith replaces logic in an eternal cycle.
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FILIPPO MINELLI SILENCE/SHAPES Ambiguity is at play in Shapes, a series of photo graphs in which experimentation with colour explosions in the landscape creates a powerful vision. The explosion of the smoke bomb lasts for just a few seconds, it is almost impossible to influence the outcome as well as to execute without a proper choice of location. The public spaces that were chosen were those that allowed for the explosion and were also ideal as a setting for a composition that seem to refer to the sublime overtones of the 19 th century landscape paintings. This series of photographs are not simply colourful images but also images comprising basic forms, offering room for their interpretation. They are conceptual, featuring non-objects and formalist compositions in a public location, and are thus open to political interpretations. Social relationships are reflected in the confrontations between colour and landscape, individual positions are contrasted with, or inserted into, communal structures; personal imaginations encounter collective image culture. The process is technical and complex with erratic factors such as the weather. The decision to use smoke in nature is with the intention to juxtapose the beauty of a medium traditionally devoted to creating chaos, with the romantic beauty of landscapes. They complete each other in a way that proves that beauty is found in clashing visions.
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FLORE-Aﾃ記 SURUN SOME DESIRE IN THE WINGS The artist places her eyes carefully on the revolts without excluding a single cause; her objective is to embrace the universality of every moment. How can she awaken words or soothe sores with her tenderness and the delicate power of her photographs? On the edge of disaster, she demonstrates that our fundamental rights are still in danger, whether in France or other parts of the world. Each story provokes us to take responsibility for our denial of indifference. Reality is absurd and complex but she demonstrates with delicacy the full energy of youth. Just watching them makes us feel strongly for the democratic disorders of the world; we feel rage and salt in our eyes. And something trembles within us, a responsibility; our whole life requires a response. We dream a dream away from violence, a resistance to political silence, and a freedom in this world, freedom to testify together with her even in the face of uncertainties.
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GRAEME WILLIAMS PAINTING OVER THE PRESENT The artist began this project 16 years after the end of apartheid rule in South Africa. As a photo grapher, he has over time explored the transformation of society and aspects of change as a general theme. In this particular essay, he focuses on the environments occupied by some of South Africa's poorest people. It would seem that although wealth and power have shifted hands since the first democratic elections in 1994, many of the benefits of these shifts have failed to filter down to the grassroots level. These photographs were taken in small towns, townships and cities throughout South Africa. The photographs focus on the interiors and exteriors of people's homes. They are intentionally static in their composition in order to accentuate the minutiae of the occupants' day-to - day dwelling places. The bright colours captured in these photographs act as visual trinkets to momentarily distract the viewer from deeper harsh realities. However, although they encourage denial, they are also suggestive of resilience, hope and a sense of humanity that remains in these poverty-stricken communities.
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HIROHITO NOMOTO FAÇADE In the aftermath of the 11 March 2011 earthquake, a massive tsunami struck the northeast region of Japan. Hundreds of kilometres of coastal areas were affected and approximately 380,000 buildings were damaged and 120,000 completely destroyed. This series is a record of some of the structures damaged by the disaster. The building façades were taken using techniques of architecture photography that allowed emotions to be kept at bay in order to depict the scene as naturally as possible. The aim of this work is to present an image of what happened there on that day. Most of the buildings were pulled down and do not exist anymore. The photograph is not always an objective reflection of circumstances as there are several subjective phases the photo grapher goes through until the completion of the work. The viewer interprets the image by assimilating it to their experiences and memories. In the advent of digital photography, the medium is becoming more ambiguous, moving away from the skilled operation of capturing images to become perhaps a little unreliable. On the other hand, photography has gained freedom from the restrictions of the truth. The artist creates his works with a strong interest in this medium that balances between freedom and ambiguity.
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HIROHITO NOMOTO FAÇADE
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HTET T SAN EMOTION/UNTOLD STORIES What inspires me most about photography is that it is the simplest way to tell stories. Stories displayed in photographs or traces of stories left behind in them, and this is what I endeavour, to tell stories via my photographs. Emotion/ Untold Stories is my latest personal ongoing project; story-telling via a single photograph. In this particular project, I focus on the 'silence' that plays a major part of human's emotions — peaceful silence, exhausted silence, thoughtful silence or mourning silence — when all is quiet, silence can burst loud and clear. The photographs speak for themselves in terms of the deep silence attached to them. The fuels of my inspiration come from my imagination and experience, through my struggles, and the moments I meet with, the pain I have shed, the joy I have felt, the silence I have heard, the dreams I have slept through and the thoughts provoked. My photographs can be regarded as the result of my wandering thoughts.
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HU QIREN MIAN XIANG: THE ART OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE FACE-READING Face-reading or physiognomy is the art of reading the mind's construction in the face and body. It is known to the Chinese as Xiang, the character for which consists of the pictures of a tree and an eye. The Shuowen Jiezi, a character dictionary from the Han dynasty, defines it as 'eye meets thing' or 'to inspect'. (Kohn, 1996). In Mian Xiang, I am interested in this physiognomic inspection or reading of the face and the profound relationship of humanity's inquiry into the metaphysical dimensions of life. Using the concept of the 100 Year Map in Chinese traditional practice of face reading as a vehicle and narration tool, this project investigates into a person's life based on evidences from old photographs, documents and belongings. I invite you to read beyond these 8 portraits, into each individual's memories, to learn and experience their unique stories and journeys.
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IAN TEH TRACES The glamorous side of China's rise has never been more prominent as the present: Sparkling glass skyscrapers soar into the skies over Beijing and Shanghai. Fashionable men and women peacock along the sidewalks. Sights like these point to a new era for a country that has recently taken centrestage in a rapidly changing world. The panoramic images of Traces explore the otherworldly scenes of the Chinese industrial hinterland, landscapes that seem to be the repository for all of man's endeavours; a record of our material desires. In contrast, the images that make up Dark Clouds evolve into an intimate chronicle of daily life in these environments. Both projects were designed to exist on their own but, more importantly, to also form concurrent chapters within a larger body of work. Each would have a distinct emphasis within an overarching theme. From the epic to the quotidian, these interweaving chapters represent two overlapping realities: the human experience of the individual, the migrant worker, and vistas that intimate the existence of a much larger economic and ideological process, one whose momentum we struggle to control, a symbol of our collective ambitions.
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IAN TEH TRACES
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JAKE VERZOSA THE LAST TATTOOED WOMEN OF KALINGA Up in the rice terraces of the Cordillera mountain range of the Philippines live the last few tattooed women of Kalinga. Traditional tattooing is seen as archaic and painful by the younger generations of Kalingas. As an indigenous group that has successfully fought against colonising forces, it is losing its practice of traditional tattooing. Studies on the tradition interpreted the practice to show that men were given tattoos because of brave acts during tribal wars while women were given tattoos to decorate their bodies. Men who attempt to get traditional tattoos without acts of bravery are shunned by the community and are now unable to continue the practice without facing criminal charges from the government. Women are unconstrained by the same reasons but are struggling to continue the practice because of the pervasive western interpretations of aesthetics that have changed their perceptions of beauty. To the women of Kalinga, the 'batok' or the tattoo goes beyond beauty and prestige but is symbolic of the traditional values of a woman's strength and fortitude. The traditional tattoo is an indigenous body art that is now considered a vanishing art along with the gate keepers of the knowledge associated with it.
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JI HYUN KWON THE GUILTY Man is by nature a social animal, because ultimate self-fulfilment can be achieved only in a society. — Aristotle Many people have said that art is a very selfish and personal activity, and the artist who creates artworks for a living has to be selfish in order for him or her to continue as a practising artist. Whether I agree or not, I create art with an important but selfish motivation — because I like it. The Guilty is a project based upon the social guilt associated with making art. When this social guilt becomes a contributing material and factor to the continuation of making an artwork, its offense becomes ambiguous. I hope for my personal feelings of guilt to diminish with the creation of this work. I believe that 'great art is born from a genuine human being', and this is what I feel is my destiny. With this belief in mind, I look around me looking for people with guilt, be it something minor or so bizarre that others cannot understand, as long as it comes from a voice from the heart, it is important. Through their participation, I see the beautiful personality of each individual and this confirms my belief that 'Humanity is the only hope'.
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JOEL YUEN IF THERE IS SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT ME, I AM NOT AWARE OF IT In response to the complex relationship between the Internet and user, my work is a form of social critique in line with Mark Poster's theory about the second media age. The Internet is no longer a passive instrument but one, which our social lives are intertwined. It cuts though time and space, transcending our ontological understanding of reality. It allows me to change my image and identity, to tell blatant lies, to play, to reconstruct and create new visual realities. I adorned fantastical costumes and masks to perform for the camera as my alter ego. There is no historical value to the images but there is a sense of nostalgia. The representations are laced with traces of ritual and familiarities, responding to the blip culture we live in. Looking at my work, I can relate to a certain race, culture, tradition or belonging that exists, but there is no authority to declare truth. Everything created and performed for the camera exists for its own sake, paving the way for a new narrative that flows in all directions, exemplified by the fluidity of the costumes and the unfinished quality of aesthetic. What is revealed is just a simulacrum of reality.
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JUSTIN MAXON SLOW DOWN‌ BREATHE‌ ONLY THIS LIFE This project is about my transition from a path of chaos to one of healing. For the past decade, I've been a blur of movement, running away from phantoms within. What once enriched my life fell away. I was in a space between worlds, a stranger to my own life. I took the route that curved back into me, threading the fractured parts of myself back into place, building the story one moment at a time. One family member at a time, collecting spirits together in a bottle jar, I tried to fit as many of them as I could, spending as much time with the people who held me close. I sank into these moments, like a warm mud bath. Intimacy is earned. It is fragile and can wilt. My garden of roses was in someone else's palm yet I held the remaining petals close, clinging to the memory of its fleeting scent. I had to reconstruct my own patch of earth to bloom. Multiple expo sures are layered, creating a patchwork of feelings. I wanted to create images that had an extravagance to them, vibrant landscapes, rich with significance.
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JUSTIN MAXON SLOW DOWN… BREATHE… ONLY THIS LIFE
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KEE YA TING INQUISITIVE INVESTIGATIONS Modern physics is based on formulas and experiments, and is a role model for exact science, which generates the illusion of a totally calculable world. But quantum mechanics and relativity theory have produced many counterintuitive results, nearly turning the world, as it was known, upside - down by rejecting the traditional conceptions of time and space and questioning the existence of a deterministic causal structure. All of a sudden, science became full of uncertainties. It seemed as though the more we learnt the less we knew. It is this philosophical legacy behind modern science that has inspired this series. In seeking to reconcile the complexities of scientific theories with the physical world as we experience it, the photographer often finds herself dwelling in the ambiguity of both.
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KERRY SKARBAKKA THE STRUGGLE TO RIGHT ONESELF We live in a world that constantly tests our stability in various forms: War and rumours of war, issues of security, effects of globalisation, and the politics of identity are external gravities turned inward, serving to further threaten the precarious balance of self, exaggerating negative feelings of control. This photographic work is in response to this delicate state. It comprises a culmination of thought and emotion, a tying together of the threads of everything the artist perceives life has come to represent. It asks the question of what it means to resist the struggle, to simply let go, or what are the conse quences of holding on? The images are layered with references to an experienced background in sculpture and painting, and the cinematic quality of the work suggests the influence of commercial film. The images stand as ominous messages and reminders that we are all vulnerable to losing our footing and grasp. They convey the primal qualities of the human condition as a precarious balancing act between the struggle against our desire to survive and our fantasy to transcend our humanness.
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KIM HAK AFTER 12 In 2000, I was a teenager hanging out with my friends and could not return home after midnight. We decided to sleep along the streets in Siem Reap province and we thought it was fun. In 2006, after attending a holy prayer and performance at a Hindu temple in Ubud, Bali, I was caught in a heavy rain and could not pass the jungle that stood between the temple and my accommodation. I decided to spend the night at the courtyard of a shop, alone. In 2011, I travelled for the first time to France and saw people sleeping in metros and along the streets. I was told that people die from sleeping on the streets every winter. By the end of 2011, I had begun photographing the people who sleep at Pak Klong Talad market in Bangkok. Their situations seem to be different as these are people who worked in the market. With these experiences, I began to shoot After 12 in Phnom Penh, unearthing that beyond homelessness and poverty, there are other reasons that turn people to spend the night on the streets such as disability, family issues, issues of exile, homosexuality, violence, and so on.
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LAURA STEVENS US ALONE These portraits of young couples living together in Paris, London and Brighton are a departure from the traditional image of the happy, loving couples within vernacular photography and instead address the hidden, melancholic moments of coexistence. I looked into the lives of others to understand how people relate on an intimate level when living side by side, day by day, by exploring the disparity between each partner striving for personal freedom and identity, alongside the need to act as part of a whole in creating a shared and unified reality. Entering the homes of real couples, I asked them to be part of a story, to narrate a moment within two lovers' lives, when communication falters and unity falls apart. I photographed the sadness, tension and boredom, which is present in all couples' lives at some point. They are actors within their own lives, playing out scenarios from my personal experiences and imagination. I grew up with the illusion that being in love was the ultimate answer. This project is my quest for an understanding, and a chance for others to glimpse into hidden worlds that may reflect their own.
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LEE PUAY YANG SEAN I BELIEVE IN THE THERAPY OF SILLINESS I have always felt that the only kinds of work worth doing are the ones that we are utterly concerned with; this is perhaps why I turned to making images at home. There is a quiet delight in photographing my family. It has also made life at home a little less mundane and uneventful. Sometimes it's magical, like when I made my parents hug. That was the first time I had ever seen them so physically intimate. It was pure joy. I do different things with my family, sometimes to say something about my thoughts on faith, desires and fears, other times I just want to make them touch each other, which is something new to us. We never touch. The best thing that happened is that the work affected the way we interact. This is my ultimate aim: to be changed by what I do. It is not enough for me to just make images. I want my images to also make me. This work started off as a way for me to make sense of how I feel towards my family. I'm glad that it has turned into something more. I hope that you, too, will get something out of them.
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LEE PUAY YANG SEAN A HEALING DEVICE
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LOLA GUERRERA DELIGHTS IN MY GARDEN Origami sculptures made by the artist are arranged in selected natural environments, implying the return of elements to their place of origin, re equipped with their natural values. Although the artist investigates the creative qualities of white paper in the same procedure throughout the series, the change of scenery brings about a change of theme, posing a number of substantive issues that appeals to contemporary society and frantic pace of modern life. The origami figures are set in the wild, seeking to break the mechanisation of industrial processes. The natural backdrop is carefully presented resulting in a series of unreal visions in a clear statement of the volatility and the ephemeral nature of everything around us. The small origami sculptures created expressly for their setting in nature, are left in order to perish in a poetic form in the same environment from which they were once uprooted.
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LOLA GUERRERA DELIGHTS IN MY GARDEN
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LUCÍA HERRERO TRIBES This series talks about the human condition as people are on a peaceful holiday — their pride to be there, their honesty and vulnerability. Groups of families and friends had set themselves by the sea, equipped to spend a day in the sun. All this, harmoniously juxtaposed, seems to reveal through humour, colour and tenderness, the profundity of a society. Tribes is a social analysis, a raw portrait of the occidental society. On the one hand it talks about the middle class suffering from an identity crisis created by the current economic situation. These images make us wonder what is changing and what will remain. On the other hand, they challenge today's concept of beauty. The photographs were taken along thousands of kilometres of the Spanish coast and people were asked to participate in situ. It is both anthropo logical and travel photography with a social statement, inspired by the studio portraits of ancient tribes who proudly posed in traditional costumes next to their prized possessions. The lighting and the theatricality of the groups add an element of fantasy to the portraits of real people in their natural surroundings. The artist refers to this way of social photography as Antropología Fantástica.
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MANUEL VAZQUEZ THEATRUM MUNDI In a society full of prying eyes like ours, everyone can become both spectator and actor in the common spectacle. Choreographed crowds transit the nameless global city in their daily commute, experiencing a paradox between anonymity and scrutiny. The idea of Theatrum Mundi has turned into a spectacle where the world is a stage, where the drama of the society unfolds on screens. We have turned into commodities on display, our collective behaviour results in an abstract pattern of the spectacle of the multitude. Like the audience of an elaborate Theatrum Mundi, we are drawn into a mirror image of the world where, if one is attentive to detail, nothing is really what it seems.
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MANUEL VAZQUEZ THEATRUM MUNDI
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MARLOUS VAN DER SLOOT DE SLAPENDE ARM (THE SLEEPING ARM) We have all experienced the weird, dull feeling of a sleeping limb or arm. Without even having to think, we are usually aware of all our faculties, where each one of our body parts is located or placed. Our arm might be resting on the couch rail, or our feet dangling in the air. The body in a normal condition is a 'corps vĂŠcu' (a lived body), a term by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. But when your arm is asleep, your limb seems to be a lifeless substance. The arm is biologically still yours, but you cannot feel it or experience with it. It seems to be the arm of a stranger. De Slapende Arm is a reaction to the sedentary life, to human beings becoming less and less active physically.
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MELISSA MOORE LAND ENDS All my work is made through a methodology of occupation of various places. This series involved multiple pilgrimages, hermitages and quests around a very unique island, the Hornby Island, a small remote community on the West Coast of Canada. The work involves a journey both inwards and outwards, and a mysterious rapport with nature, a relationship between art and nature expressed with the lone human figure occupying the rusty dreams of utopia. I attempt to make a poeticised image exploring an intimate relationship with a landscape and terrain, and offer these images to empower and suggest the embodiment of an atmosphere and affect. Somehow or other, attachment and function simply happens. As much as the human or land may be separate components or individual units, they are but members of a vast complex mass and they will always end up where they are destined to be. Any single part removed will result in the collapse of the entire system, a domino topple, a chain reaction, the entire lot will dislodge and fall apart.
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MITI RUANGKRITYA IMAGINING FLOOD Imagining Flood is a photographic study concerning the recent floods that have taken place in Bangkok (2011). The photos aim to capture the foreboding and surreal nature of the event by presenting the flood in a dream-like and otherworldly manner. When news first arrived that Bangkok would be affected, concern naturally became widespread and all manner of preparations unfolded. But the centre of city remained untouched, although the sense of threat lingered in people's minds, as the city remained encircled by waterlogged houses, streets and motorways. It is the sense of waiting and fear that first drew me to the project. Whether the floods were experienced first-hand or through news reports, conjuring up a mental image of the event cannot be avoided, which influenced my approach to shooting these scenes — as if developed from the subconscious, in contrast to the urgent and frenetic style depicted in the media. Each scene takes place at night or in the early hours creating a dream-like atmosphere. The series is deliberately shot at these particular times using a tripod and slow shutter speed in order to capture a sense of stillness and the sense of dreaded expectancy that the floods have created.
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MUSUK NOLTE MALDONADO SHAWI: MYSTERY WITH A NAME OF ITS OWN Shawi is the name of an ethnic group inhabiting a spit of land in the province of Alto Amazonas, located in the depths of the Peruvian jungle. Despite living in complete isolation over the course of centuries, they held out against the indifference and ignorance of the Peruvian State. Since the late nineteenth century, people have come to extract rubber from their trees, cut their timber, or draw the oil beneath their feet. Nevertheless, they have managed to keep more territory than other groups and have come to symbolise the struggle of indigenous communities in preserving their land from external exploits. The Shawi people are one of the least studied groups despite being one of the largest in numbers living in the Amazon Rainforest. They bear an ancient way of unabridged co - existence with the forest, by learning about their mystical powers guided by shamans. As they get in contact with more urban ways of life, they try to balance their traditions with modernity. Some of their practices may have been lost, but they have clung to essential features of their heritage, like the preservation of their original language, their hunting techniques and use of medicinal plants.
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MUSUK NOLTE MALDONADO SHAWI: MYSTERY WITH A NAME OF ITS OWN
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NGE LAY THE RELEVANCY OF RESTRICTED THINGS Though seldom included in Southeast Asian surveys, art from Burma appears increasingly on the regional radar. Nge Lay, a young artist living in Yangon, contributed a new photographic sequence that superimposed her own history onto that of her country. Performing herself behind the mask of her unknown father, Nge Lay emphasises on the importance of the paternal presence at the head of the family. The Relevancy of Restricted Things, with a few rapid frames, depict groups of masked villagers whose dignity, longing, solidarity, frailty and endurance came to the fore as they face the physically and psychologically oppressive life that is the lot of the Burmese today.
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NGE LAY THE RELEVANCY OF RESTRICTED THINGS
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NORIHISA HOSAKA BURNING CHROME I had set out to take a picture that unites light, mass and time — the three elements that abound in Tokyo. I love shooting Tokyo. Working under the theme "decay of lights", I captured the city's landscape in hope of expressing the brilliant illumination all over Shinjuku, Shibuya, Akihabara, et cetera — their bright lights the perfect artificial beaut y in this modern age. It was impressive to behold a city that could power so many lights. Then an earthquake struck on 11 March 2011 and the ensuing tsunami caused a nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima. There was a sense of lost love for the enchanting city lights that were powered by the nuclear plants, as I pondered what they implied. When I click my shutter now, I take a different picture. The images will be a memory of power wastage and a record of a new era of power reduction. Someday in the future, people might live in a quiet and still landscape, reminiscing of our brilliantly lit past.
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NORIHISA HOSAKA BURNING CHROME
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OLIVIA MARTY RECOLLECTION Started in 2010 as a pictorial study on a new interpretation of the photographic space, the artist has developed her own technique, superimposing layers of old photographic material (vintage photographs depicting intimate scenes of Vietnamese life from the 1930s to the early 1970s) projected on various urban surfaces (buildings, waste dumps, shipyards, etc.) and recaptured through the lens, as a resuscitation of the nameless men and women who, for a while, haunted the streets of Saigon and who have fallen into oblivion. This re -composition allows for a richness of meaning, otherwise difficult to capture within one material. Fusing different dimensions of time and space, revealing the hidden codes behind reality, these projections of the city act as an X-ray, revealing not the inner structure of walls, but the lives of those that used to laugh, suffer and die between them. Projected on those walls, they are the ghosts of the city, reclaiming their right to be remembered. They hold a mirror to the living, reminding them that they too are projected against these walls in another dimension of time.
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PATTY CARROLL ANONYMOUS WOMEN: DRAPED Many women find themselves in this position: silently running a home and family, creating beauty and order from chaos, but remaining unnoticed by the outside world, the people around them, or even themselves. Yet, obsessing and perfecting the home and its accoutrements often shape the identity of many of us, not only women. Perfecting a space with objects or dĂŠcor has become so central to our lives that one's identity becomes fused with it to the point of invisibility. As a female artist, I confront the emotional issues of hiding, comfort, and safety; how the home environment is a place of perfection, and yet decoration camouflages one's individuality to the point of claustrophobia. I am photographically creating worlds that debunk, critique and satirise these myths of claustrophobic perfection. The draperies in these photographs act as both a visual cue as well as a literal interpretation of overidentification and obsession. Everyone has a hidden identity formed by personal traditions, memories, and ideas that are cloaked from the outer world. Cultivating these inner psychological, emotional and intellectual worlds is perhaps our greatest challenge as people, wherever we come from or wherever we live.
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REGINALD VAN DE VELDE TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS Tomorrow Never Knows is a photographic series representing a journey into the world's abandonments. While traveling abroad I scout for the unknown and unseen. I know from my exploring escapades which path to take, but sometimes I will choose another, making big drops into oblivion. Ignorance is bliss, someone once told me. This series is a showcase of past splendour, derelict hospitals, mothballed monasteries, dormant structures and everything in-between. It is the result of the intangible desire to explore what mankind has left behind.
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REGINALD VAN DE VELDE TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS
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SHEN CHAO-LIANG STAGE Performing groups in the form of cabarets, song and dance ensembles have been making regular appearances in all sorts of occasions — weddings, funerals and festivities — around Taiwan since the 1970s. Stage trucks, the subject of this photo series, are the mobile carriers exploited by these performing groups, subtly making their way into the collective memory of the Taiwanese. In order to create a dreamy and otherworldly ambience of the stage trucks with their colourful totems and lights diffused into the surroundings, all the pictures were shot at sunset. There is an emphasis on the presence of the trucks, their existence in the plebeian society, as a strong contrast against reality, that is indescribable and beyond words. The images seek to break away from the visual expression and form of the traditional documentary approach by trending towards a new- angled contemporary mode that seamlessly integrates environmental portraits, visual grouping and category construction. This collection is selected from the Stage series shot between 2006 and 2011.
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SHEN CHAO-LIANG STAGE
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SHEN LINGHAO POETIC MELANCHOLY This set of photographs has no specific theme or idea but together they convey an atmosphere, a touch of sentimental beauty. While photographing these images, I had deliberately set no concrete content; instead, I let the scene stir up emotions in me. My focus of interest lies simply in the scene, and I try my best to refine the feelings that are needed to capture the images. As a result of my spiritual pursuit of romantic aesthetics, I tend to be intoxicated by poetic sceneries, which accounts for my personal style of photography. There are a lot of uncertainties when it comes to taking photographs with film because the effects are usually random. But these uncertainties somewhat enhance the impact of the sceneries. This method of photo taking, capturing anti-conventional visual space or a thoroughly dream- like visual, challenges the concepts of traditional photography that focuses on integrity and realistic senses.
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SHEN LINGHAO POETIC MELANCHOLY
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SHEN WEI CHINESE SENTIMENT Chinese Sentiment is a personal journey for the artist to reconnect with the authentic Chinese life, both in the private and public space. The ultimate goal is to reveal China from an internal and intimate perspective, and to appreciate its realities without its political and economic influences.
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TRAN VIET VAN BREATH In this series, I endeavour to capture the atmosphere of meditation. I want to depict the portraits of monks and nuns, seated in the dim light, with a 'free' meditative mind. In meditation, a Buddhist monk often closes his eyes. With his eyes closed, he looks inwards. When the meditation ends, the monk opens his eyes and looks at the real world again. Dharma begins from life and returns to serve life. I have taken photographs of the front and back of each monk, as there are two faces to everyone, the hidden face and the exposed face. This series was taken at Tay Thien Zen monasteries, one of the great monasteries of Truc Lam Zen in North Vietnam. After the shoot, I continued to interview some of the monks on their reasons for leaving home, the significance of Buddhism to them, and so on. I also captured some images of their daily lives and expanded the series. This is the third part to my series under the topic of Dharma and Life which I have been pursuing for many years.
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TRISTAN CAI TALES OF MOVING MOUNTAINS: WHY WON'T GOD GO AWAY? Exploring between devotion and irony, the artist started the Heway Human- Nature Repository in 2009 to collect materials that signify the Godhuman relationship in contemporary culture. Instead of debunking religion, an investigation of revalidating religion in contemporary culture in consideration of the powers of imagery and archiving has been carried out.
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WAWI NAVARROZA DOMINION After my studio in Manila was completely wrecked by a storm, my first impulse was to leave and head to the volcanoes and later, also in Hawaii, a place throbbing with the pulse of the volcanic. I photographed lava rock, white ash, black sand and sometimes, I intervened. It's not clear if I made peace with the land by surrendering with a white cloth or if I covered it as if with a burial cloth. Can I define by means of erasure? What is the measure of the wilderness contained in pictures denied of scale? When there are joint observatories of different countries in one specific mountain top looking at the stars, in a consortium, what does it imply? An open sky? I wanted to echo the emotional temperature of places that exist in the wilderness, which ultimately drones at the heart of man. Coming face to face with brute nature, with its pervading sense of stillness and overhanging kinesis, here I have arrived at my own feet looking at our shared volcanic history. Dust. Stars. Land.
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WILLIS TURNER HENRY CINA MEDAN = MEDANESE CHINESE I am Chinese. I am Indonesian. In Indonesia, I am Chinese. In China, I am Indonesian. I celebrate the Lunar New Year. I eat noodles on my birthday. I speak Hokkien with my hometown friends. I speak a little bit of Mandarin. I don't speak Bahasa very well. I don't practice Indonesian traditions. I hardly have any native Indonesian friends. I don't understand their culture, our culture... I don't feel a sense of belonging in Indonesia. I live in Medan. Medan is in Indonesia... I have no Indonesian values that I am proud of. My parents never talked about them. All I know is, I am Chinese and I live in Medan. This work is a series of self-portraits, a visual exploration of my feelings as I question my identity. I address issues of nationality, belonging, and alienation. Incubated from my personal experience as a Chinese Indonesian from Medan, I seek to get deeply immersed in the emotional crisis by involving my physical body, to explore the examination of the fragment of experiences recorded in a single moment. The role of photo graphy here is not merely documentary but unites with performance to enhance the perception of being lost-in-paradise.
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WU CHENG CHANG VISION OF TAIWAN The series of images in Vision of Taiwan expresses the artist's personal observations, experiences and opinions formed or inspired by the environments of Taiwan. Photographed skilfully with long expo sure, the images expound the conflicting perception of aesthetics and environmental issues, insinuating at the absurdity and conflicts that exist behind the beautiful sceneries. The face of the current environment seems to be lost in the real world, sucked into a vacuum where one can look without seeing. The series offers a perspective on the relationship between us and our surroundings, subtly critiquing the subject through surreal images. Despite expressing disappointment and pessimism towards the current state of Taiwan's environment, it remains hopeful and expectant of a reformation.
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WU CHENG CHANG VISION OF TAIWAN
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ZAKARIA ZAINAL SINGAPLURAL I photographed the 2011 Singapore General Elections as it proved to be a significant chapter in Singapore's history — a sea of change for Singapore and its citizens' perceptions toward politics. Titled Singaplural, these photographs explore the interaction of common people with their immediate spaces via a tilt-shift perspective. Singaporeans from all walks of life — regardless of race, language and religion — came together to attend and listen to various political rally hotspots all over Singapore in what was a contest of the hearts and minds of voters. Though most Singaporeans have little interest in politics, these photographs depict otherwise. Close to 50,000 people were reported to have attended such rallies. Singapore's ruling People's Action Party may have swept back to power and secured 81 of 87 seats in parliament, but the six opposition seats lost were the highest since this young nation's independence in 1965. Using a perspective control lens, these images offer a miniaturised and alternative perspective to the elections — in a country affectionately known as the little red dot. In Singaplural, these common, and sometimes overlooked, spaces combine the plurality of people, perspectives and ideas, converging them into one location during the elections.
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ZAKARIA ZAINAL SINGAPLURAL
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ZHANG XIAO THEY Chongqing is the largest independently administered municipal district in China. It is one of the most representative cities in the modernisation of China and great changes have been taking place here everyday since China began opening up 30 years ago. As the economic centre in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, Chongqing reaps maximum economic benefit from the Three Gorges Dam project, yet due to the effects of the same project, many historical thousand-year-old towns have disappeared. Chongqing is like a big construction site, building fervently to catch up with the rest of the world. In the advent of a development that contradicts their tradition and culture, citizens here still have their ordinary lives to lead — working nine -to -five, feeding the kids, taking vacations, and so on. As the Chinese economy takes flight, they face a high level of stress and anxiety. These pictures seek to illustrate the social development of the modern Chinese, a reflection of us.
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ZHOU WEI PICTURESQUE SCENERY A fleeting moment, a land beyond poetry and childhood memories, where clusters of chimneys rise from the wild turf. These tall buildings, an artificial beauty, they produce neither smoke nor fog. These stout, colourful columns emit dust storms with smells that assault our senses, stored in the depths of our memories. The day has come for me to confront this land again, and the feeling is abrupt, strange, fragmented, and indescribable. My self and the reality of what the land has become now, have completely lost connection.
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Biographies Mark Power [23] ( UK, b.1959) , as a child, discovered his father's home -made enlarger in the family attic, a contraption consisting of an upturned flowerpot, a domestic light bulb and a simple camera lens. His interest in photography probably began at this pivotal moment, although he later chose to study painting and drawing instead. He 'became a photo grapher' (somewhat accidentally) in 1983, and worked in the editorial and charity markets for nearly ten years, before he began teaching in 1992. This move coincided with a shift towards long-term, self-initiated projects, which now sit comfortably alongside a number of large -scale commissions in the industrial sector. Power's work is perhaps best known for his large format, conceptual approach to both selfinitiated personal projects as well as his commissions. Power's work has been seen in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the world and he has published five books : The Shipping Forecast (1996) , Superstructure (2000 ) , The Treasur y Project (2002) , 26 Different Endings (2007) and The Sound of Two Songs (2010 ). He is currently a Professor of Photography at the Universit y of Brighton.
Stuart Franklin [24] ( UK, b.1956) studied photography and film at West Surrey College of Art and Design and geography at the University of Oxford (BA and PhD). Franklin's coverage of the Sahel famine from 1984 to 1985 won him acclaim, but he is perhaps best known for his celebrated photograph of a man def ying a tank in Tiananmen Square, China, in 1989, which won him a World Press Photo Award. Since 1990, Franklin has completed over t went y assignments for National Geographic. In 1999 he produced The Time of Trees, a photographic essay examining the social relationship bet ween nature and societ y through the prism of trees. This was followed four years later by The Dynamic Cit y, about the evolution and ever yday life of cities. In 2005 he completed Hôtel Afrique, an exhibition on Africa’s elite hotels, and the same year, aided by a grant funded by the National Trust, he published Sea Fever, a documentar y project about the British coastline. Franklin recently published a long-term project on Europe’s changing landscape, focusing in particular on the climate and on patterns of transformation. He is currently working on a conceptual landscape project entitled 'Narcissus', which was displayed at the Noorderlicht Photography Festival in 2012 and is due to be published soon.
Jacob Aue Sobol [25] ( Denmark, b.1976) studied at Fatamorgana, the Danish School of Documentar y and Art Photography in 1998. There he developed a unique, expressive st yle of black- and -white photo graphy, which he has since refined and further developed. In the autumn of 1999 he went to live in the settlement Tiniteqilaaq on the East Coast of Greenland. Over the next three years he lived mainly in this township with his Greenlandic girlfriend Sabine and her family, living the life of a fisherman and hunter but also photographing. The resultant book Sabine was published in 2004 and the work was nominated for the 2005 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. In 2006 he moved to Tokyo and during the next t wo years he created the images from his recent book I, Tokyo. The book was awarded the Leica European Publishers Award 2008 and published by Actes Sud (France), Apeiron (Greece), Dewi Lewis Publishing (Great Britain) , Edition Braus (Germany) , Lunwerg Editores (Spain) and Peliti Associati ( Italy). Aue Sobol was announced as Magnum's most recent Member photographer at the Annual General Meeting in July 2012.
Alina Kisina [ 34–35] ( UK, b.1983) is a Ukrainian photographer based in London. She regularly returns to her native land to take pictures that use a mixture of abstraction and representation suggesting a realit y beyond that of the things actually shown. Her work from her exhibition "Zerkalo|Mirror" was featured in "Thinking in Unit y after Postmodernism" — an international conference on innovative approaches to aesthetics, literature and film at the Universit y of Munich in 2010. Her solo show, Cit y of Home was exhibited at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow in 2011. Works from this series is part of the Format 2011 international photography festival in Derby and will be featured in Aleppo International 11th Photography Festival (Syria) and the Chernihiv PhotoFest ( Ukraine) in 2012.
Anida Yoeu Ali [36–37] (Cambodia, b.1974) is a performance artist, writer, and global agitator. She is a first- generation Muslim Khmer woman born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago. After residing for over three decades outside of Cambodia, Ali returned to work in Phnom Penh as part of her 2011 US Fulbright Fellowship. Utilising an interdisciplinar y approach to artmaking, her installation and performance works investigate the artistic, spiritual and political collisions of a hybrid transnational identit y. From the Faroe Islands to the Bronx, Copenhagen to Ho Chi Minh City, she lectures, exhibits and performs internationally. Her pioneering work with the critically acclaimed group "I Was Born With Two Tongues (1998–2003)" is archived with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Programme. Her artistic work has been the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. She earned her BFA in Graphic Design from the Universit y of Illinois and an MFA from School of the Art Institute Chicago. Ali is a collaborative partner with Studio Revolt, an independent artist-run collaborative media lab operating out of Phnom Penh where she currently resides.
Arnold Reinisch [ 38–39] (Austria, b.1962) born in Graz, Austria, is a freelance artist practicing in the mediums of photography, sculpture, installation, video and painting. He has held and participated in exhibitions since 1993, in Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungar y, Israel, Netherlands, Nor way, Slovenia, Spain, UK and US.
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Arturo Betancourt [40–43] (Mexico, b.1972) has been a freelance photographer since 1993. His work has been exhibited widely in museums, galleries and cultural venues all over the world, including "La Muerte: Culto, Ofrenda y Arte" in Berlin, Germany, "Originales Solidarios" in Spain in 2007 and also in a retrospective organised by the US government, and "Arturo Betancourt, Mexican Retrospective 1993–2008" in San Antonio, Texas. He recently presented "Tehuanas, Women of Flowers" at the Gjethuset Museum in Denmark. He has received several awards and distinctions, including Promoting the Development of Arts Education Prize in Visual Arts awarded by the National Council for Culture and Arts of Mexico in 2003 and an Honorable Mention at the III International Exhibition of Digital Art in Argentina in 2006. He has recently been awarded a scholarship to specialise in contemporar y photography in Seville, Spain.
Bronek Kozka [44–45] (Australia, b.1970 ) lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. His position as lecturer in photography at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Universit y and his commercial photographic practice form the basis for his art practice. Kozka has exhibited in several group shows and award/prize shows including the national portrait prizes in Australia (2009, 2009, 2010) and UK (2008), Albur y Art Prize, SCAP08 (commended) Scap09, Monash Galler y of Art Award (2008 & 2009) and the Hasseblad Masters Award 2008. Kozka's solo shows include "Picturing Communit y: Ugunja, Kenya" (2002) , "Auschwitz Revisited" (2005) and "Memor y Myth & the ¼ Acre Block" (2011). Kozka was also invited to exhibit a solo show at the Grand Prix International de Photographie de Vevey in September 2010. Kozka's work was also shown and awarded at the Pingyao International Photo Festival in China. In 2011 Kozka's work featured at Chobi Mela, the Bangladesh photo festival, Hanmi Museum of Photography (Korea), Vision Quest Galler y (Genoa, Italy) , and FotoFreo in Australia (2012). Kozka's work is held in several collections in Australia and internationally. He is represented by Bett Galler y & MARS Galler y.
Carlo Bevilacqua [46–49] ( Italy, b.1961) is a photographer and filmmaker based in Milan, Italy, whose career has spanned more than t went y years, alternating photography and direction of documentaries and video clips including Little Red Robin Hood, a biographic documentary about Robert Wyatt, Soft Machine's singer and drummer, with Elvis Costello, Brian Eno, Paul Weller and Nick Mason ( Pink Floyd drummer). His awards include Mention of Honor in the International Photographic Awards 2008, 2009 and 2011, in America Photo 2008, in Tau Visual Professional Prize for Creativit y 2008, and winner of the HF Prize in SI Fest Savignano Immagini 2008. His works have been exhibited or screened in various films and photo festival including Boutographies in Montpellier, France, Cortona On The Move, Italy, Biennal of Photography Brescia Italy, PhotoBiennale in Thessaloniki Greece, International Fotografia Festival Rome, Indian Vision London, Fotografia Europea Reggio Emilia Italy, Encontros da Imagem Braga — Portugal, Center for Fine Art Photography Colorado USA and National Portrait Galler y London (UK) for the Taylor Wessing Prize 2011.
Christian Lutz [50–51] (Switzerland, b.1973) was born in Geneva and graduated from The Ecole Supérieure des Arts et de l'Image "Le75" in Brussels. His photographic approach is based on a scrupulous and sociological obser vation of human groups : politicians who have been slammed in the artifice of the protocol or economical elites who invest in developing countries. The formal qualities of his pictures appeal, yet at the same time it distills an acidic quality, which deconstructs the instruments and machineries of power. Tropical Gift is the second part of his photographic trilogy and it features economical power. The first part of this trilogy features political power and is entitled "Protokoll". He is currently working on the final installment of the trilogy, photographing an evangelist movement in Switzerland, with a focus on religious power.
Cyrus Cornut [52–53] ( France, b.1977) is a photographer and artist with an academic background in architecture. With architecture as his template, he came to the world of photography through cities, paving a photographic path within the urban jungle, in search of 'the poetr y of fatalism in these cities, by always setting the human scale in this eternal urban palimpsest '. He has been working on capturing architectural form through light, and looks into the human hive of activit y and social organisation. With a keen interest and sensitivit y towards the urban or symbolic problems faced by the places he travels through, he questions the whys and wherefores of all that is built and of environmental and social impact, through his photography.
Dale Yudelman [54–55] (South Africa, b.1958) is a photographer born in Johannesburg. Inspired by his creative parents, he began photography at a young age under the tutelage of his father. In 1979, barely out of his teens, he became a staff photographer for The Star Newspaper. In 1986 he moved to London and later Los Angeles, working as a freelance photographer for various newspapers and magazines, returning to a newly democratic South Africa in 1996. A number of projects followed, including "I am…", a portrayal of the ongoing plight of refugees in South Africa. He was recently named as the winner of the inaugural Ernest Cole Award — the countr y's most prestigious prize for social documentar y photography. Yudelman's work is a consequence of a studied eye, brokered over thirt y years of incessant image making. Enthralled with the many aspects, nuances and dimensions of realit y — his images are a manifestation of how modern photography is able to escape the bounds of the 'record' — creating an authentic and evocative account of recent times.
Ellie Davies' [56–57] ( UK, b.1977) work has been exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. Solo shows in 2011 included "Come with Me" — New Landscape by Ellie Davies at The Print House Galler y in London, "Smoke and Mirrors" at 10GS, London, and a solo exhibition at Brucie Collections, Kiev, Ukraine. She will hold her sixth solo show in the autumn of 2012 at The Richard Young Galler y, London. Recent group exhibitions include "Nine-Point Perspective" at Hotshoe Galler y, London, "Symbiosis" at Hoxton Art Galler y, London, "Lens Culture International Exposure Awards" in the US, and "The Tallinn 15 th Print Triennial" at Kumu Art Museum, Estonia in Januar y 2011. Awards include Honourable Mentions in the Professional Women Photographers International Juried Exhibition, The Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2010, 1st Place in the Fine Art Landscape categor y of Paris Photo Prize PX3 2010, ArtSlant Juried Winner 2010, and Commended in the LPA Landscape Awards 2010. Her work has been featured in a wide selection of international publications including Silvershotz, Art Ukraine, F- Stop Magazine, Photo + Magazine and Fuzion Magazine.
Fernando Montiel Klint [58–59] (Mexico, b.1978) was born in Mexico Cit y. He studied photography at the Escuela Activa de Fotograf ìa and Centro de la Imágen. His works have been exhibited around the world in individual exhibitions such as "Acts of Faith" in Fernando Pradilla Galler y, PhotoEspaña 2011, "No Escape", at San Antonio Museum of Art in 2010, and "Nir vana", in Galeria Cero, Bogota, Colombia. Group exhibitions include " Worlds of Mexico", "25 Contemporar y Photographers, Ireland, Poland, Spain and Belgium" at the Bozar in the Palace of Fine Arts, Belgium, 2011, Possible Worlds, Art Museum of the Americas, Arte Moderno de Chile, 2010, Revolution and Commerce curated by Trisha Ziff, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Santralistanbul at EstambulBilgi Universit y in Turkey, the Palau de la Virreina in Barcelona, La Triennale of Milan, and Chobi Mei, Bangladesh. He was recently invited to Rencontres d'Arles 2011 for an individual show "Actos de Fe".
Filippo Minelli [ 60–61] ( Italy, b.1983) born in Brescia, Italy, is a contemporar y artist, connoting his artistic productions with inter ventions in public spaces, often in urban t ypology. His works can be found from the Italian countr yside to the biggest European cities, in Southeast Asia, from Mongolian steppe to African deserts passing by the separationbarrier bet ween Palestine and Israel. His art works are internationally recognised and have been featured in publications by Taschen and Gestalten. His works have been reviewed by some of the most important international art and design vanguardmagazines and newspapers, as well as exhibited in various museums and foundations in Italy and abroad. His artistic path, forged based on the use of language, has led him to investigate the importance of the words in contemporaneit y, and also the opposite — silence as part of language. This has been visualised through photography of his public performances in the Silence/Shapes series, and represented in his paintings on canvas through violent and disarming colours of oil paint.
Flore-Aël Surun [62–63] ( France, b.1975) is a French photographer who takes pictures of 'sur vivors' who touch the heart. She has held solo exhibitions including "Du désir dans les Ailes" in Villejuif, at Palais des Congrès, "Demonstrations" at Baudoin Lebon Galler y, Paris, "Nous sommes faits de nature" and "Corps à Corps" at Tendance Floue Galler y, Montreuil, France. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions such as "Génération De L'Air" at the European House of Photography, Paris, "20 years of Tendance Floue" at Rencontres d'Arles and FTM - MTF at Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Her works have been shown in publications including "Photopoche Tendance Floue, douze pour un" Delpire edition and "Mad in Sète" a magazine made by Tendance Floue. She is the recipient of various awards including the "Grand Prix" at the Festival of Biarritz, Portfolio with honours at the Prix Kodak de la Critique Photographique and Portfolio selected at the HSBC Photography Prize.
Graeme Williams [64–65] (South Africa, b.1961) was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He was contracted by Reuters to cover South Africa's transition to ANC rule in 1989. Since the late 1980s he has worked on his own photographic projects. His work is housed in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian ( USA) , South African National Galler y, Rotterdam Museum of Ethnology, Duke Universit y ( USA) , Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, Finnish School of Photography and Cape Town Universit y. He has staged solo exhibitions in Johannesburg, New York and Paris and has contributed to many combined exhibitions, including the 2011 Figures and Fictions exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. He has also contributed to a number of publications showcasing photography in South Africa and around the world. His first book, The Floor, documents the last year of open outcr y trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, while the second book, The Inner Cit y, is an exploration of isolation, captured through images of Johannesburg as it struggled to adjust to the changing social and political climate. Editions de L'Ceil ( Paris) published a monograph of his work and the series The Edge of Town has been published in pocket-book format.
Hirohito Nomoto [66–69] (Japan, b.1971) was born in Osaka, Japan where he now lives and works. He graduated from the Osaka Universit y of Arts with a BFA in 1994, and started his career as a photo grapher in 1996. His solo exhibitions include "into the silent land / kobe" at Tanto Tempo, Kobe, "into the silent land / osaka" Tezukayama Galler y in 2010 and "LIFE" at Art Stage Singapore and Tezukayama Gallery in 2012. Group exhibitions he has participated in include Tokyo Contemporar y Art Fair in 2009, Art Fair Tokyo, Art Taipei and Korea International Art Fair in 2010. Photography Fairs he has participated in include Junkudo in Osaka, the Manpukuji Art Festival in Kyoto, "MFANZINE Plus+" Bloom Galler y in Osaka in 2010, Asia Top Galler y Hotel Art Fair 2011, Hong Kong Art Fair, "2 Dimension Galler y Artist" Tezukayama Gallery in 2011, "Select" Jill D'Art Galler y, Nagoya, Mancy's Art Night Mancy's, Tokyo, Photography Magazine 81lab. 6 th Anniversar y Photo Exhibition Galler y Athens, Osaka, Japan, New Cit y Art Fair in 2012. His works have also won awards including the "Digmeout prize" at Kansai Onaeba Photo Festival in 2008, London International Creative Competition ( LICC ) in 2009 and international Photography Awards ( IPA) in 2011.
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Htet T San [70–71] (Myanmar, b.1986) was born in Dawei, a small town in the southern part of Burma, and grew up in the old capital city, Yangon. In August 2008, Htet received a scholarship to study photo graphy and art studio studies in University of AlabamaHuntsville and chose to pursue photography by dropping out of medical school. In September 2009, Htet held her first photography solo exhibition and lecture/discussion on her film and pinhole photo graphy works in Burma, under the sponsorship of Alliance Française. In 2010, on the closing day of the Yangon Photo Festival, Htet 's photo essay "Tomboy" was screened as a selection of works of emerging photographers of Burma, where one of her photographs was selected to be shown in the Ian Parr y Scholarship Exhibition in Gett y Images Galler y, London. Htet relocated to New York Cit y in early 2011 and is currently pursuing further studies while working as a visual artist/photographer and retoucher. Her clients include MAC Cosmetics, Designer Valentina Kova, Luiza Bonadiman and Niche Media LLC.
Hu Qiren [72–73] (Singapore, b.1983) is a Photography and Digital Imaging graduate from the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological Universit y of Singapore. Being a contemporar y artist who works primarily with the photographic medium, he views his works as a form of communication on recurring themes of culture and tradition. Qiren first gained recognition when he was awarded merit for the inaugural Singapore Young Photographer Award 2008, Architecture Categor y, organised by Cit y Development Limited, which was exhibited at the National Museum of Singapore and was awarded 1st Prize for Project Shutter 2010 Photography Competition, organised by the United Nations Association of Singapore. More recently, Qiren has started on a long-term project using the traditional practice of Chinese face -reading as a narration tool to explore the relationship bet ween humanit y's inquir y into the metaphysical dimensions of life and its artistic manifestation.
Ian Teh's [74–77] (UK, b.1971) internationally exhibited photographs were awarded the EF grant from the Magnum Foundation in 2011 and highly commended for the Prix Pictet prize in 2009. His selected solo shows include the Jack Shainman Galler y in New York in 2004, Paris Beijing Gallery in Beijing in 2008 and the Flowers Galler y in London in 2011. In 2012, Teh will have his first solo show in Rotterdam, Holland at the Kunsthal Museum. Teh's photographs have been widely exhibited and featured in international publications such as Time and The New Yorker. His works have been featured in contemporar y art publications such as ElenaOchoa Foster's C- International. He has published t wo monographs, Undercurrents (2008) and Traces (2011). His work is also part of the permanent collection at the Los Angeles Count y Museum of Art ( L ACMA) and the Hood Museum of Art ( USA).
Jake Verzosa [78–79] ( Philippines, b.1979) was born in the Philippines and is a freelance photographer based in Manila. His work as a successful fashion and commercial photographer in his early years has given him a chance to expand his craft and has taken him to outside destinations around the region. After taking a documentar y workshop class under mentor Phillip Jones Griffiths, Jack Picone and Steve Coleman in 2007, he started doing personal works which focuses on local life, youth stories, social issues and shifting cultures. In 2007, Verzosa has been commissioned by the ASEAN to document fort y inspiring stories of youth all over Southeast Asia for the book "Young Southeast Asia". He came out with his second commissioned book project in 2009 entitled " Where The Children Are" where he documented the different situations of youth in the Philippines. He is now currently working on documenting the last tattooed women of Kalinga province near his hometown Cagayan.
Ji Hyun Kwon [ 80–81] (South Korea, b.1981) was born in Seoul, South Korea. She graduated at the top of the School of Law in Hongik Universit y in Seoul. After her first Bachelor's degree of Law, she studied post- graduate studies with Criminal Law in Korea Universit y in Seoul. She then switched to major in Fine Art Photography and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography from Chungang Universit y. Kwon moved to Germany in 2010. She was the winner of portfolio review in Bratislava during the 19 th "Month of Photography" in 2009 with a work titled The Guilt y. She was selected as one of the "Photographers of the Year" and "Young Artist of the Year" in South Korea in 2010. She has had many solo exhibitions and group shows in both Europe and Korea.
Joel Yuen [ 82–83] (Singapore, b.1983) received his BFA from Nanyang Technological Universit y and an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design. Notable exhibitions include The Singapore Show: Future Proof at Singapore Art Museum at 8Q SAM, Xhibit at Menier Galler y, London and Seeing in the Cit y at Guildhall Art Galler y, London. Yuen is a recipient of the Artists and Collectors Exchange Bursaries Award and winner of the 27 th UOB Painting Of The Year Competition.
Justin Maxon [ 84–87] ( USA , b.1983) was born in a small town in the woods of northern California. He is mainly interested in pursuing long-term projects that examine the complexities of human struggle. He has received numerous awards for his photography, from competitions like World Press Photo, UNICEF Images of the Year, POYi, and NPPA's Best of Photojournalism. He won the Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year at the 2008 Lucie Awards; the same year he was named one of PDN's 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch. He received the 2010 FotoVisura Photography Grant and the 2011 Cliff Edom "New America Award" from NPPA . He was selected to participate in World Press Photo's 2010 Joop Swart Masterclass. Most recently, he received a grant from the Magnum Emergency Fund, along with the 2012 Alexia Foundation Professional Grant for World Peace. He has worked on feature stories for publications such as TIME, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Mother Jones Magazine, Fader Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and NPR.
Kee Ya Ting [ 88–89] (Singapore, b.1988) is a young Singaporean photographer. Her previous endeavours in film have cultivated a desire to tell stories within still frames, or in her own words, 'visual poetry'. Taking a whimsical approach to often-serious fields of studies, she aspires to create a space where these t wo worlds meet. Her works display elements of humour, play and discover y, painting poetr y with light. She has exhibited in galleries in Singapore and London. Ya Ting holds a diploma in Film, Sound, Video from Ngee Ann Polytechnic and a BFA in Photography and Digital Imaging from Nanyang Technological Universit y.
Kerry Skarbakka [90–91] (USA , b.1970 ) is an artist and educator working in photography and video. He received his BA in Studio Art in 1994 from the Universit y of Washington, and completed his MFA in Photography from Columbia College in Chicago in 2003. Solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporar y Art in Chicago, Fift y- One Fine Art Photography — Antwerp, Belgium, Irvine Contemporary — Washington DC, and Lawrimore Project — Seattle. Group shows include the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Taubman Museum of Art, Virginia, Ahlen Art Museum, Germany and the Warhol Museum. His work has been featured in such notable publications as Afterimage, Art and America, ArtReview International and Aperture Magazine. Skarbakka has received funding and support from the Creative Capital Foundation, the 1% for the Arts (City of Seattle) and the Illinois Arts Council. Skarbakka is currently a Professor of Digital Media and Photographic Studies at Prescott College in Arizona.
Kim Hak [92–93] (Cambodia, b.1981) was born in Battambang, Cambodia, and is a Cambodia -based photographer with an international portfolio. His works have been exhibited at Photo Phnom Penh 2010, PHOTO Quai Paris 2011, The East Galler y Toronto 2012, World Event Young Artists Nottingham 2012, International Multimedia Art Festival Yangon 2012 and his portfolios have been published locally and internationally in publications such as Chine Plus (France), Images Magazine ( France) , Libération ( France) , Ojo de Pez (Spain), Internazionale (Italy), and on websites of La Lettre ( France) , Invisible Photography Asia (Singapore) and in Phnom Penh Post. In 2011, he was awarded the international prize of "Artistic Creation Project 2011" by Musée du quai Branly in Paris. He began to share his knowledge in photography with Cambodian children by offering workshops to street and deaf children of Kruosar Thmey Phnom Penh in 2011, Anjali House Siem Reap in 2011 & 2012 (Angkor Photo Festival) and Our Cit y 2012.
Laura Stevens [94–95] ( UK, b.1977) was born in the UK and is currently based in Paris. She received an MA in photography from the University of Brighton, England, in 2007. Her photography has received awards including a Px3 Gold Medal for Fine Art/People 2012, Magenta Flash For ward 2012, Honourable Mention in the Lens Culture Exposure Awards 2011, finalist in the Peaches and Cream competition and a Julia Margaret Cameron Award. Stevens' photographs have been exhibited internationally, in group and solo shows, such as The Lat vian Museum of Photography, Galerie Huit in Rencontres d'Arles and the Foto8 Summershow in London. Her work has been featured in The British Journal of Photography, PHOTO +, F2 Magazine, Conscientious and The Times.
Lee Puay Yang Sean [96–99] (Singapore, b.1985) is a photographer born and based in Singapore. He first picked up a camera at 18 and began to discover his affection for the medium. He uses photography to confront his realit y in a manner that, hopefully, allows him to return to life with a little more tenderness and passion. He has held solo exhibitions internationally, including Cambodia, Spain and France, and has participated in group exhibitions in countries including Turkey, USA , and India. His work has been seen in publications internationally including Phnom Penh Post (Cambodia) , London Sunday Times ( UK) , Internazionale 78 th ( Italy) and De l'Air ( France). He has won numerous awards for his photography including the Special Jur y prize at Angkor photo festival (2007) and the ICON de Martell Prize (2011).
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Lola Guerrera [10 0–103] (Spain, b.1982) graduated in Communication from the Universit y of Malaga and obtained an MA in Photography from the Inter-national School EFTI. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and Mexico, and has received many awards including Finalist at the "Year in Review" Art Competition 2011, New York, Discoveries PHE10, Biodiversity Foundation and "Caminos de Hierro". Lola is currently represented by Gallery Astarte in Madrid and Voz Galerie in Paris. Her photographs have been acquired by private institutions such as the Museum of Contemporar y Art in Malaga, and have been published by prestigious magazines such as "Blink", the online edition of Wallpaper* and Reponses PHOTO. Her works blend sculpture and installation, highlighting the artisan use of different materials like paper and thread. Her recent works "Cotidianidades" and "Delights in My Garden" experiments with the creative uses of white paper.
Lucía Herrero [104–105] (Spain, b.1976) who was born in Madrid, Spain, studied Architecture, Photography, and Physical Theatre. Her photographic works have won awards including SFR Jeunes Talents, Prix Exchange of Boutographies, Coup de Cœur at Rencontres d'Arles 2011, International Loupe Awards, IPA 2011, PixMO, or Sony World Photography Awards in the "Photo-journalism and Documentar y/People" categor y, Terr y O'Neal and IPA (Internacional Photography awards), and selected for the group "Discoveries PhotoEspaña 2010". Her works have been exhibited around the world including the Photography Festival of Pingyao (China), Rencontres d'Arles, SCAN Festival in Tarragona (Spain), Festival Lille 3000, Sony World Photography Awards winners' exhibition at Chelsea Museum ( New York) , and Somerset House of London, Foto-septiembre Festival (Mexico), Belfast Photofestival, Rencontres Photographiques de Montpellier, Central exhibition hall "Menege" in St. Petersburg, LenscultureSplashlight Studios ( New York). She developed Antropología Fantástica, an approach to social photography, documenting portraits of real people with elements of drama and fantasy, where the subjects interpret themselves as she positions them.
Manuel Vazquez's [106–109] (Columbia, b.1976) work to date has a strong interest in the theatricalit y of cit y life and spaces. His work places the spectator as a witness of a 'spectacle', built with visual traces, where images are meticulously constructed with a strong narrative component. It is in the spectator's memory and imagination where they look for resonance. Vazquez was selected finalist in the Hyeres 2012 Photography Festival. In 2009, he was among the Flash For ward Emerging Photographers and he was one of the Descubrimientos finalist in PHotoEspaña 2009. In 2008 his work Traces was featured in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries. Vazquez studied Photography and Urban Culture at Goldsmiths Universit y in London.
Marlous van der Sloot [110–111] ( Netherlands, b.1986) born in Culemborg and based in Den Haag, The Netherlands, graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts in the Netherlands. Her work developed towards the perception of senses, and she sees her photography as a criticism on the alienation of the human being. Her works have been shown in numerous exhibitions and festivals including the Voies Off festival at the Recontres d'Arles (2010/2011) , PANL #17, Foto festival Naarden, and Slideluck Potshow. Her works have also been shown in publications including Beaux Arts Magazine in 2012 ( France) , "The Big Ideas of 2012" in Adbusters # 99 (USA), and "Ster ven om daarna eindelijk te kunnen leven" in Den Haag Centraal (2011). She has won awards such as Competition "werk in uit voering" at Pulchri Studio (2010 ) , and done photographic work for Nederlands Dans Theater, Me Studio and De Cultuurbrouwerij.
Melissa Moore [112–113] ( UK, b.1978) is an artist and Associate Lecturer at London College of Fashion, Universit y of the Arts, London. She works primarily with photography; also painting and video. Her upcoming publications include Il Corpo Solitario, L'autoscatto nella fotografia Contemporanea (The Solitar y Body, The Self Portrait in Contemporar y Photography) , by Giorgio Bonomi, published by Rubbettino Editore. A monograph of Island, as part of the "emerging artists" series at under discussion with Skira Editions. Her recent work from the Island series was featured in Hilar y Koob Sassen's film "Transcalar Investment Vehicles", and previewed at the Whitechapel in March 2012. Melissa also played the role of the 'Daughter' in this feature-length art film.
Miti Ruangkritya [114–115] (Thailand, b.1981) born in Thailand, graduated from Universit y of Westminster with an MA in Photojournalism in 2008. Since graduating, Miti has received a "Selected Winners" and an "Honourable Mentions" award for Magenta Flash For ward — Emerging Photographers in 2011 & 2012 and a Silver Medal at Prix de la Photographie in 2012. He has participated at the Angkor Photography workshop for selected Young Asian Photographers, and his project "Space Shift " was featured in the debut issue of "Messy Sky" at Le Plateau, Paris. His portfolio has been featured in the British Journal of Photography, Royal Photographic Societ y Journal and 500 Photographers blog. Limited edition prints are available at Contact Editions and a selection of his images is represented by Millennium Images. In 2012, his work will be exhibited at Noorderlitch, Singapore, Angkor and Phonm Penh Photo Festivals.
Musuk Nolte Maldonado [116–119] ( Peru, b.1988) born in Mexico is an award-winning Peruvian photographer based in Lima, Perú. His work focuses on documental and art photography. He has held four solo exhibitions and participated in many collective art shows all over the world, in countries such as China, Spain, Brazil, France, Ireland, E.E.U.U and Germany. He has also won numerous awards for photography including winner of the IV Eugene Courret national documental photography prize, the Juan Bartolomé humanitar y photography prize, and awarded second place in portrait photography and the excellence prize in Poyi L A . He was recently awarded with the FONCA scholarship in Mexico. He is also a member of the collective Versus Photo with whom he is developing diverse joint projects, some of which have been exhibited in Spain, China, Ireland, Holland, Germany, Brazil and Peru.
Nge Lay [120–123] (Myanmar, b.1979) was born in Pyin Oo lwin, Myanmar, and currently lives in Yangon. She graduated with a BA in Painting from the Universit y of Culture in Yangon, Myanmar in 2003 and went on to do jeweller y design in 2004. Her interest in photography emerged in 2007. She has had a number of exhibitions in Yangon and Asia. Nge Lay participated in Magnetic Power, ASEAN Korea Contemporar y Photography and Media Art Project in 2009, TR ANSPORTASIAN Contemporar y Photography, Making Histor y: Southeast Asian Art at ConversAsians during the Singapore Art Festival in 2010, and Women In- Bet ween 1984–2012, Asian Women Art Exhibition at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.
Norihisa Hosaka [124–127] (Japan, b.1968) was a writer before he began his career in photography, after the birth of his daughter. He has always had an obsessive interest in anime, manga and RPG games, which greatly influenced his desire to create and express himself to the public. Since embarking on photography, he has won several awards in photo graphy including the Grand Prix, Esquire Japan Digital Photography Award 2007–2008, and Selected Photographer, New Directions 2012, Wall Space gallery, Debra Klomp Ching (USA). His solo exhibitions include "Esquire Digital Photography Awards Special Exhibition", Esquire Magazine Japan, Isetan Shinjuku Men's-kan, Tokyo, Japan (2008) , "Camera Techno delica", Next Generation, Ricoh Ringcube, Tokyo, Japan (2010), and "Burning Chrome", Nostalgia Cafe & Galler y, Tokyo (2011) , Galler y TantoTempo, Kobe (2012). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions internationally including "New Directions 2012, Crossing Territories/Arte Factum", Debra Klomp Ching, Wall Space Galler y (USA) and "In Your Dream", Susan Burnstine, PhotoPlace Galler y (USA).
Olivia Marty [128–129] ( France, b.1978) , also known as O, is a French- South African contemporar y artist, architect and designer who lives and works in Saigon, Vietnam. Olivia graduated from the Facult y of Architecture of Versailles ( France) and qualified as a French Architecte DPLG in 2004. Her thesis looked at the development of the Asian metropolis and had involved a year-long project on The Rehabilitation and Space Planning of the Makkasan Slums in Bangkok. She began photography early on while pursuing her architecture career in Paris, later relocating to Vietnam in 2004 as her husband is French-Vietnamese. Her photographic art project recOllection started in 2010 as a pictorial study on new interpretation of the photographic space. She has developed her own technique, superimposing layers of old photographic material projected on various urban surfaces and re - captured through the lens as is — by doing so she blends architectural details and street art with emotions.
Patty Carroll [130–131] ( USA , b.1946) is the Adjunct Full Professor of Photography at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She graduated with a BFA in Graphic Design from the Universit y of Illinois, and an M.S. in Photography from the Institute of Design, IIT. Her awards include Artist Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council (2003) and Art Takes Miami, Photography Categor y (2011). She has held solo exhibitions at many prestigious locations including the Museum of Contemporar y Photography ( USA) , Art Institute of Chicago, Royal Photographic Societ y ( UK) , State of Illinois Galler y and Museum, Blue Star Art Space ( USA) , White Box Museum (China) , and Northern Illinois Universit y Art Museum. Her publications include Spirited Visions, Culture is Ever y where, Living the Life: The World of Elvis Tribute Artists, Man Bites Dog (2012–2013) , also in Changing Chicago, Women Photographers. She has been granted residency at Akiyoshidai Arts Village (Japan) , Anderson Ranch, Colorado, Texas A& M Universit y, and Columbia College ( USA). Her work has also been acquired in many public and private collections.
Reginald Van de Velde [132–135] ( Belgium, b.1975) scouts the unknown and unseen, capturing the sheer momentum of fragile abandonments. His works have been exhibited internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, including Theater aan Zee 2011 Oostende (August 2011), Tomorrow Never Knows, Godot Ghent ( Februar y 2012) , Fotofestival Knokke Heist (March–June 2010), The Somerset House, London (May 2011), Cannes Lions International Festival 2011 (June 2011), and Contrasts, Tour & Taxis Brussels ( November 2011). He has won numerous awards including the Triennial Barbaix Award for Photo graphy (2008) , was winner at the Cannes Lions International Festival 2011 and was finalist at the World Photography Awards in 2011. His works have been featured in publications including The World Photography Awards Book (2011) , Verlaten Plekken, Vergeten Stemmen (August 2011) , Esquire Magazine (June 2008) , and Beaut y in Decay (2010 ).
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BIOGRAPHIES
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Shen Chao-Liang [136–139] (Taiwan, b.1968) born in Tainan, Taiwan, is a freelance photographer and photography lecturer based in Taiwan. He obtained his master's degree from the Graduate School of the Applied Media Arts, National Taiwan University of Arts. He has won numerous awards including the Golden Tripod Award of Best Photography (magazine category) of R.O.C (Taiwan) in 2000, 2002 and 2012, the Asia Award in Sagamihara, Japan (2004) , the Best Foreign Photographer Award at the Dong-gang Photography Festival, Korea (2006), Honourable Mention of 2010 Taipei Art Award (2010), and the Artists Wanted: Photography Category Award Winner, New York (2011). His major publications include STAGE, Tsukiji Fish Market, YUL AN Magnolia Flower, and Reflections of Nan- Fang- Ao.
Shen Linghao [140–143] (China, b.1988) , born in Shanghai, graduated from the School of Fine Arts, Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts. He believes that artistic creation is the best way to reconcile life and spirit and holds experiences and memories important in his creation, which combines the heart and mind to an ultimate harmony. He has participated in exhibitions including the Pingyao International Photography Festival ( Pingyao) , the Three Shadows Photography Award, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre ( Beijing) , NotAnotherLandscape Art Exhibition, EDGE Galler y ( Hong Kong) , Chongqing youth art biennale, and Chongqing Art Museum (Chongqing). He has won numerous photography award including the Qiu Zhijie Gold Award 2011 and the Epson New Vision Contest 2011 Photo Highest Award.
Shen Wei [144–145] (China, b.1977) , born and raised in Shanghai, is an artist currently based in New York City. His works have been exhibited at venues including the Museum of the City of New York, the Art Institute of Boston, the Lincoln Center Aver y Fisher Hall and the CAFA Art Museum. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) , the J. Paul Gett y Museum, the Museum of Contemporar y Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, the Librar y of Congress, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, and Museum of Chinese in America, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Kinsey Institute. He is the recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Arts Residency (2009) , the Asian Cultural Council Arts & Religion Fellowship (2012) , and the winner of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Photography Portfolio Competition (2012). His photographs have been featured in publications, including The New Yorker, Aperture, and Wall Street Journal. His monograph Chinese Sentiment was published in 2011 by Charles Lane Press. He holds an MFA in photography from School of Visual Arts, New York; a BFA in photography from Minneapolis College of Art and Design; and an A A in decorative arts from Shanghai Light Industr y College.
Tran Viet Van [146–147] (Vietnam, b.1971) is a reporter for Lao Ð ng newspaper. He has held eight solo exhibitions since 2005 and has published four books : Speak myself to escape from the lonely, Dharma and Life, Vietnam photographs — Discover and Integration and The meeting at the afternoon Saturday. His works have been featured in international publications such as The Photo Paper Magazine, Telegraph, Independent, Blur Magazine and Art wanted calendar 2012. He is the first and only Vietnamese photographer whose portfolio was collected by Win- Initiative ( USA) , and the first and only Vietnamese photographer who has won the "Prix de la Photographie, Paris" for four consecutive years. He has also won the Photo Master Cup ( UK) for t wo consecutive years, IPA ( USA) for three consecutive years and numerous other international photography awards. He has also been invited as jur y for the Documentar y Cinema annual awards held by Vietnam Cinema Association in 2012.
Tristan Cai [148–149] (Singapore, b.1985) , as a practicing artist, has been recognised for the fine qualit y of his works. He has received multiple awards and grants such as the highly prestigious San Francisco Art Institute Master of Fine Arts Fellowship Award, Cadogan and Murphy Contemporar y Art Award and the Arts Bursary Award from the National Arts Council of Singapore. Cai has also exhibited extensively across Asia, in the US and Europe such as recently in Berlin, Germany and Shanghai World Exposition, China. In 2011, Cai was handpicked to be one of t wo artists to represent Singapore in "Cross+scape", a key exhibition that sur veys Asean's new generation of artists. His works will travel through three major museums in Korea from Fall 2011 to Spring 2012.
Willis Turner Henry [152–153] (Indonesia, b.1989), born in Indonesia, started practicing art when she discovered her love in drawing and painting. She then moved to Singapore to pursue her interest in art and graduated with a BFA in Photography and Digital Imaging from the Nanyang Technological Universit y, Singapore. She challenges herself by experimenting with various mediums to explore and deliver her ideas, and believes that 'art is a method of self- discover y'. She has won numerous awards including Winner of ASEAN - Korea Multimedia Competition: "Future Image" (Seoul, South Korea) , Winner of Clifton Art Prize 2011 (Australia) , and Personal Favourite Prize by Toshihiro Asai, East West Art Award 2011. Her works have been shown in numerous exhibitions including Pingyao International Photo Festival 2011 (China) , Image, Materialit y, and Space, Goodman Art Center Galler y (Singapore) , and O.O.P.S/Offerings of PerformanceS ( Lee Wen: Lucid Dreams in the Reverie of the Real) , Singapore Art Museum (Singapore).
Wu Cheng Chang [154–157] (Taiwan, b.1965) is a former press and commercial photographer who is currently teaching at the Department of Visual Communication Design, LingTung University in Taiwan. His works have been exhibited internationally, at the Hong Kong International Art Fair 2012, Fotoseptiembre USA–SAFOTO International Photography Festival 2011, the 2 nd Dali International Photography Exhibition 2012 (China) , 2010 3 rd Novosibirsk International Festival of Contemporar y Photography ( Russia) and Open House Galler y ( New York). He has won many awards including the Grand Prize of Creative Award of Visual Art 2012 (Taiwan) , Grand Award of China Lishui International Photography Cultural Festival 2011, Grand Prize of The Power of SELF an image comp etition in 2010 (Artists Wanted, New York) and in 2009 the Honorable Mention Award of Taipei Arts Awards. His photographs have been featured in many publications including Punctum magazine ( India) , ACT magazine (Taiwan) and Taiwan Panorama. His works are in the collections of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
Zakaria Zainal [158–161] (Singapore, b.1985) is a photographer born and based in Singapore. He makes meaning of the world through his photographs and focuses on documentar y projects that show the changing face of Asia in conflict or in progress. His recent work on the retired Singapore Gurkhas, an anthology of portraits and anecdotes, is published into a book titled "Our Gurkhas: Singapore Through Their Eyes". This work was also exhibited as part of a group exhibition "Singapore Sur vey: Strange New Faces" at Valentine Willie Fine Art Galler y. At the same galler y, he was selected for "CUT 2012: New Photography from Southeast Asia" that showcases work of t welve new, emerging and established photographers and artists in the region. Zakaria's work has appeared in publications internationally such as the Nepali Times ( Nepal) , The Straits Times (Singapore) , Art4d (Thailand) and The Invisible Photographer Asia.
Zhang Xiao [162–163] (China, b.1981), born in Yantai, Shandong Province, China, graduated from the Yantai University, Art Design of Architecture Department. He was a photographer for the Chongqing Morning Post and is now a freelance photographer based in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. Awards he has received for his photography include "They", Three Shadows Photography Award (China) , "Coastline", PRIX HSBC POUR L A PHOTOGR APHIE ( France) , and "Shanxi", MIO Photo Award, (Japan). He has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally including "Shanxi", FORMAT International Photography Festival, (UK) , "They", Contemporar y Chinese Photography, Katonah Museum of Art ( New York) , "Coastline", Galerie Baudoin Lebon, (Paris), "Subdue", Dali International Photography Festival, (China) , and "Coastline", 2902 Galler y (Singapore).
Zhou Wei [164–165] (China, b.1969) , born in Rugao Jiangsu Province, China, graduated from the Photography of Arts Institute in Nanjing Normal Universit y, and is currently a freelance photographer based in China. He has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally in countries including China, Singapore and Russia. His solo exhibition was held in 2010 in Changzhou, China. Awards he has won include Outstanding Photographer at the Lishui International Photography Festival in 2011.
Wawi Navarroza [150–151] ( Philippines, b.1979) is an artist from Manila, Philippines, currently living and working between Spain and Manila. She graduated from De La Salle Universit y, Manila and attended continuing education at the International Center of Photography, New York. She has recently completed her scholarship for the European Master of Fine Art Photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design, Madrid. Her work with photography has taken shape in highly st ylised symbolic tableau vivant, and more recently landscapes, constructed still-life, and installations. Her works have been widely exhibited in the Philip pines and also internationally. She has participated in the Asian Art Biennale in Taiwan (2011), "CUT: New Photography from South East Asia" at Valentine Willie Fine Art Galler y, Singapore, and "Emerging Wave — Asian Contemporar y Photography", Korea (2010 ) , amongst other festivals and exhibitions. Awards she has won include: Asian Cultural Council Fellowship Grant (2009) , Lumi Photographic Art Awards, Helsinki (2011) , Singapore Museum Signature Art Prize finalist (2011) , a nomination for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2011) and Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (2012).
3 RD SIPF 2012 HIGHLIGHTS
Participants at the Cyanotype workshop conducted by local photographers.
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Open Call Showcase at one of the 6 locations. The festival utilised shipping containers as temporary pop up space at the concourse in Central Library.
At the showcase The History of Monuments, artist Wang Qingsong (王庆松) is being interviewed by LianHe ZaoBao senior correspondent Wu Qi Qi.
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3 RD SIPF 2012 HIGHLIGHTS
HOP — House of Photography is a mobile photo space moved into the heartland of Choa Chu Kang, North West of Singapore to share the joy of photography basics.
The 3 rd Portfolio Review is a meeting place between young professionals and curators. Photographer Zakaria Zainal at his review with Christine Barthe and Gae Newton.
Open Call Sho wcase at The Substation, a suppor ter of SIPF 2012.
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Outside In — A Magnum Photos Showcase is a collaborative showcase with ArtScience Museum® at Marina Bay Sands which profiled the works of Stuart Franklin, Mark Power, and Jacob Aue Sobol.
Within ArtScience Museum® at Marina Bay Sands is a showcase of over 200 works by 22 exhibitors selected & curated by the festival.
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3 RD SIPF 2012 PROGRAMMES The 3rd SIPF joins in the fun of what has become our gadget essential — the ubiquitous camera — by celebrating every passion for photography. Be it an offhand snapshot from a camera phone or a long-drawn process to create the scene right out of the artist's imagination, the camera is never too far from hand to capture or create a moment; photography must mean something to everybody.
EXHIBITION SIPF Open Call Showcase National Library, The Plaza ArtScience Museum® at Marina Bay Sands Singapore Management University Gallery The Substation Gallery Societe Generale Gallery at Alliance Française Selegie Arts Centre, Photographic Society of Singapore Silvermine by Thomas Sauvin Singapore Management University Concourse The History of Monuments by Wang Qingsong Singapore Management University Concourse Outside In: A Magnum Photos Showcase ArtScience Museum® at Marina Bay Sands
3rd PORTFOLIO REVIEW Reviewers: Alejandro Castellote (Spain), Dr Adele Tan (Singapore), AP Jim Ramer (USA), Professor Peter Fitzpatrick (USA), Christine Barthe (France), Dirk Claus (Amsterdam/Thailand), Fiona Rogers (UK), Gael Newton (Australia), Seok Jaehyun (South Korea), Louise Clements (United Kingdom), Thomas Sauvin (France/China), Patricia Levasseur de la Motte (France/Singapore), Takeki Sugiyama (Japan), Zeng Han (China), Rob Dawson (UK/ Singapore), Gwen Lee (Singapore)
181 The Business of Photography Facilitators: Chow Chee Yong & Ho Hui May Speakers: Michael Kan, Executive Producer, The Shooting Gallery; Jimmy Fok, Founder of Calibre Pics; Jing Quek, Superhyperreal; Jennifer Koh, Photovoice SG; Robert Zhao Renhui, Artist; Larry Peh, &Larry Design; Gwen Lee, Director of SIPF Meanwhile Transformations: Topography & Actuality Speaker: Andrea Botto (Italy) Fluid World Speaker: Yee I-Lann (Malaysia) Mediating Realities Speaker: Wang Qing Song (China) Facilitator: Alejandro Castellote (Spain) Mes56: Contemporary Photography in Indonesia Speakers: Akiq Aw & Wimo Bayang (Indonesia) Hijacked! British Contemporary Photography Speaker: Louise Clements (UK)
Workshop: Contemporary Landscape Educator: Andrea Botto (Italy) Workshop: A Photo Book Project Educator: Kai-Olaf Hesse (Germany) The Limits of Photography in Digital Age Panel Speakers: Associate Professor Jim Ramer (Director of MFA Photography, Parsons the New School of Design); Professor Peter Fitzpatrick (Chair of the Photography Department Columbia College Chicago); Associate Professor Oh Soon Hwa (School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang Technological University) SIPF Open Call: Perspectives from Asia & Europe Speakers: Alejandro Castellote, Zeng Han Facilitator: Gwen Lee
FILM SCREENINGS Curator: Tan Ngiap Heng Films: Bernh & Hilla Becher DaIdo Moriyama: Stray Dogs of Tokyo Magnum Photos: The Changes of a Myth Erwin Olaf: On Beauty and Fall Image Makers: Singaporean Photographers Pictures from a Revolution Kessel's Eyes JR: Women Are Heroes
STUDENT EDUCATION PROGRAMMES Education Manager: Kong Yen Lin I Spy With My Little Eyes: A Day Out With the Pinhole Camera Retelling Histories: a Old Photo Project Find and Shoot: A Photographic Hunt Guided Tours
Photography in Philippines Contemporary Art Speaker: Isa Lorenzo (Philippines) (Post) ColonIal Photography Speaker: Alexander Supartono Recent Documentary Photography in China Speaker: Zeng Han
EDUCATION Magnum Mentorship Singapore Mentors: Stuart Franklin, Mark Power and Jacob Aue Sobol Participants: Aslam Saiyad (India), Mark Townsend (Australia), Schneider Philippe (France), Samyukta Lakshmi (India), Metta Setiandi (Indonesia), Jean Marc Caimi (Italy), Wong Peng Kit (Malaysia), Andrew Chew (Singapore), George Wong (Singapore), Jimmy Lam (Singapore), Loh Mengwai (Singapore), Loh Xiu Hui (Singapore), Paul Yang (Singapore), Zann Huizhen Huang (Singapore), Solomon Quek Jia Liang (Singapore), Ying Ang (Singapore), Edwin Koo (Singapore), Inigo Deangulo (Spain), Ornin Ruangwaltansuk (Thailand), Preedee Ponchevin (Thailand), Tandia Bambang (Indonesia), Anais Lopez (Holland), Kris Vervaeke (Belgium)
Slapende Arm (Marlous Van der Sloot, The Netherlands); The Relevancy of Restricted Things (Nge Lay, Myanmar); Silvermine (Thomas Sauvin)
EVENING PRESENTATION Programme Coordinator: Tan Kelu Facilitator: Kong Yen Lin 6 October, Saturday Shared Stories of Asia and Europe (ASEF and culture360.org); Ge Tai (Bob Lee, Singapore); Illusion Reality (Shen Chao Liang, Taiwan); Vision of Taiwan — Quantity and the Loss of Soul (Wu Cheng Chang, Taiwan); Singaplural (Zakaria Zainal, Singapore); Into the Silence: Hermits of the Third Millenium (Carlo Bevilacqua, Italy); The Story of Zen Buddhist (Tran Viet Van, Vietnam); Painting Over the Present (Graeme Williams, South Africa); Spaces in Between, (Eliseo Barbàra, MoST Agency, Thailand) 7 October, Sunday Dominion (Wawi Navarroza, Phillippines); Mian Xiang: The Art of Traditional Chinese Face-Reading (Hu Qiren, Singapore); The Art of Science: Constructing the Universal Illusion (Kee Ya Ting, Singapore); Decay of Lights —Memories of 311 (Norihisa Hosaka, Japan); Sincere Photography, Kwon Ji Hyun (South Korea); Amazon Communities: Beyond the Stereotypes (Musuk Nolte Maldonando, Peru); SelfPortrait & Performativity (Willis Turner Henry, Indonesia); The House of the Raja (Xavi Comas, Thailand/Spain) 8 October, Monday Tropical Gift of Nigeria (Christian Lutz, Switzerland); Angels of Angeles (Seok Jae Hyun, South Korea); Transcending the Ordinary (Anida Yoeu Ali); Standstill Voyage Of Discovery On The Spot, (Melissa Moore, United Kingdom); Anonymous Women (Patty Carroll (United States); The Fan (Joel Yuen, Singapore); De
OUTREACH PROGRAMMES PIn-o-rama: a Pinhole Camera Workshop Painting with the Sun Being Creative with a Point & Shoot Camera A Story in 26 Frames
HOP (HOUSE OF PHOTOGRAPHY) Instructors: Hu Qiren and Kee Ya Ting Experience the magic of photography through HOP! Converted from a shipping container, the House of Photography (HOP) is a roving camera obscura.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The 3rd SIPF is only made possible by the participation of 55 exhibitors, 40 professionals, 35 volunteers, 12 team members and many individuals who have helped, advised, and encouraged us in the process. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all who have been involved; it is you who have made the festival come true. Portfolio Review Alejandro Castellote (Spain), Dr. Adele Tan (Singapore), Christine Barthe (France), Dirk Claus (Amsterdam/ Thailand), Seok Jae Hyun (South Korea), Louise Clements (UK), Thomas Sauvin (France/Beijing), Patricia Levasseur de la Motte (France/Singapore), Takeki Sugiyama (Japan), Zeng Han (China), Rob Dawson (UK/Singapore), Gwen Lee (Singapore), Fiona Rogers (UK), Jim Ramer (USA), Peter Fitzpatrick (USA), Gael Newton (Australia) Evening Presentation Wawi Navarroza (Philippine), Bob Lee (Singapore), Shen Chao Liang (Taiwan), Carlo Bevilacqua (Italy), Hu Qiren (Singapore), Graeme Williams (South Africa), Zakaria Zainal (Singapore), Eliseo Barbàra (Thailand), AsiaEurope Foundation (ASEF) and culture360.org, Kee Ya Ting (Singapore), Tran Viet Van (Vietnam), Anida Yoeu Ali (Cambodia), Wu Cheng Chang (Taiwan), Musuk Nolte Maldonando (Peru), Seok Jae Hyun (South Korea), Patty Carroll (USA), Marlous Van der Sloot (Netherlands), Norihisa Hosaka (Japan), Xavier Comas (Thailand/ Spain), Seok Jae Hyun (South Korea), Willis Turner Henry (Indonesia), Kwon Ji Hyun (South Korea), Melissa Moore (United Kingdom), Joel Yuen (Singapore), Nge Lay (Myanmar), Christian Lutz (Switzerland) Special Project Showcases Wang Qingsong (China) Thomas Sauvin (France/Beijing) Artist & Curator Series Alexander Supartono (Indonesia/UK), Andrea Botto (Italy), Yee I-Lann (Malaysia), Louise Clements (UK), Wang Qingsong (China), Wimo Bayang & Akiq AW (Indonesia), Isa Lorenzo (Philippines), Zeng Han (China), Seok Jae Hyun (South Korea) Talking Point Peter Fitzpatrick, Jim Ramer, Oh Soon-Hwa, Alejandro Castellote, Patricia Levasseur de la Motte, Zeng Han, Chow Chee Yong, Ho Hui May Education Programme & Outreach Kong Yen Lin, Vanessa Ban, Kee Ya Ting, Hu Qiren, Bob Lee House of Photography (HOP) Hu Qiren, Kee Ya Ting, Larry Peh, Randy Yeo, Albert Koh, Joseph Pang, David Ho, Lee Yan Peng, Ho Tsu Yin Professional Workshops Andrea Botto (Italy) Kai-Olaf Hesse (Germany) Magnum Mentorship Singapore Stuart Franklin Mark Power Jacob Aue Sobol Fiona Rogers
Director Gwen Lee Curators Alejandro Castellote Patricia Levasseur de la Motte Zeng Han Advisor Sherman Ong Production Manager Jay Lau Film Curator Tan Ngiap Heng Project Coordinator Tan Kelu Programme Manager Ho Hui May Education Manager Kong Yen Lin Publication Text Writer Samantha Liew Public Relations Glenn Lim & Tang Li / 20Twenty PR HOP Coordinator Hu Qiren Volunteer Coordinator Erika Lau Programme Assistants Liana Yang, Farhan Dharma, Calvin Pew Exhibition Assistant Liana Yang Publication Samantha Liew Tour Guides Kong Yen Lin, Zhang Zhuojin, Nicole Lim, Sylvie Aymes, Lee Sea Ming, Lee Gibson Festival Documentation Tony Gravina, Nicole Lim, Clarence Aw Volunteers Hairol Nizam, Tony Gravina, Amanda Goh, Ayush, Chen Bolang, Denise Chng, Eileen Tan, Mary Bernadette, Looi Qihui, Katrina Ocampo, Jin Chong, Justine Ocampo, Ritika Jain, Marianne, Tan Kai Zhun, Ranjitha d/o Santharajan, Richard Ong, Calvin Pew Design Asylum Campaign Photography Tan Hai Han Thank You Mr Kwek Leng Joo, Esther An, Kelvin Mun, Jean-François Danis, Veronica Manson, Moh Siew Lan, Rajka, Valentina Riccardi, Chan Wai Ling, Tay Chiew Boon, Lucas Chiew, Benedict Tan, Koh Yan Leng, Kelvin Mun, Cheang Meng Ching, Ong Chiew Yen, Angelita Teo, Jason Chan, Sharon Vu, Jennifer Leong, Alex Soh, Elaine Ng, Tay Ai Ching, Ang Boon Yee, Veronica Boudville, I-Shan, May Sng
SPONSORS
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COLOPHON BIOGRAPHIES Published in 2013 by Singapore International Photography Festival 222 Queen Street, #02-02, Singapore 188550 t: +65 6339 8655 e: info@sipf.sg www.sipf.sg Edition of 1000. Founded in 2008, the festival is part of Art Photography Centre Ltd, a not for profit entity by guarantee. ISBN: 978-981-07-3840-2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Singapore International Photography Festival. The Copyright for all the photographs in this book resides with the respective photographers, with the following courtesies: Alina Kisina, Anida Yoeu Ali, Arnold Reinisch, Arturo Betancourt, Bronek Kozka, Carlo Bevilacqua, Christian Lutz, Cyrus Cornut, Dale Yudelman, Ellie Davies, Fernando Montiel Klint, Filippo Minelli, Flore-AĂŤl Surun, Graeme Williams, Hirohito Nomoto, Htet T San, Hu Qiren, Ian Teh, Jacob Aue Sobol, Jake Verzosa, Ji Hyun Kwon, Joel Yuen, Justin Maxon, Kee Ya Ting, Kerry Skarbakka, Kim Hak, Laura Stevens, Lee Puay Yang Sean, Lola Guerrera, LucĂa Herrero, Manuel Vazquez, Mark Power, Marlous van der Sloot, Melissa Moore, Miti Ruangkritya, Musuk Nolte Maldonado, Nge Lay, Norihisa Hosaka, Olivia Marty, Patty Carroll, Reginald van de Velde, Shen Chao-Liang, Shen Linghao, Shen Wei, Stuart Franklin, Thomas Sauvin, Tran Viet Van, Tristan Cai, Wang Qingsong, Wawi Navarroza, Willis Turner Henry, Wu Cheng Chang, Zakaria Zainal, Zhang Xiao, Zhou Wei.
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