Photography art Gallery Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up - 7th July, 2017|Photography Art Definition

This week Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up comes to you from Hong Kong where I'm a lecturer on a master tour for global journalism studies.

It is a fascinating time to be right here given the city has just celebrated, or commiserated depending on your attitude, the 20 th anniversary (1 July) of the handover from Britain to China. Meeting with the essential media firms has additionally delivered specific perspectives at the destiny of journalism and the significance of this city as a hub of world media.

But this Hong Kong go to has no longer only been about media and politics, it has additionally been approximately seeing exhibitions. Today I share my favourite with you, the retrospective of Fan Ho's work.

Profile:

Fan Ho (1931-2016) - The Cartier-Bress on of the East

Fan Ho

Born in Shanghai in 1931, Fan Ho started his love of photography at the age of 14 after he became given a Kodak Brownie. Four years later he bought a Rolleiflex, which have become his digital camera of choice. When he moved with his own family in 1949 to Hong Kong he started documenting the metropolis, spending lengthy days expecting the proper mild, the proper scene, his imagination sparked by using the daily happenings on the road.

Fan Ho experimented with lighting the usage of the factors he found on the streets - smoke, shadow, steam, water - as computer graphics. He favoured shooting at dusk and his topics have been the regular humans on the streets and within the markets.

As is regularly the case, Fan Ho in no way got down to create an historical visual report of Hong Kong, but that is precisely what his series, shot inside the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, has turn out to be. Later Fan Ho went directly to work in motion photographs and is likewise revered as a movie director, however his love for still images remained at some point of his existence. He also shared his information teaching at numerous universities round the world.

Considered the daddy of road pictures in Hong Kong, in 1959 Fan Ho posted his e book of essays, "Thoughts on Street Photography" which continues to be in print nowadays, but only to be had in Chinese.

Fan Ho noticed photography's "special hyperlink to reality" as its greatest asset, but he also stated the complexities involved in taking pictures that decisive moment.

He spoke on ideas of objectivity and subjectivity, debates that still occupy photographers' thoughts nowadays. Fan Ho believed objectivity "seeks to portray reality in a right away, sincere way," at the same time as subjectivity "geared toward portraying some other type of reality and had to be seen greater as a mirrored image of 1's soul and spirit in nature".

(C) All works Fan Ho

To find out more about Fan Ho's paintings and to buy his books visit the website right here.

Next week I'll be lower back running a blog in the freeze of Melbourne's winter, but for now I'm playing the 80 % humidity, the large each day thunderstorms and pelting rain and the warmth of the East. Have a fantastic weekend.

Photography art Gallery Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up - 4th August, 2017|Photography Art Definition

This week Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up goes lower back to Hong Kong with Benny Lam's Trapped, plus a few private insights from a recent trip.

Photo essay:

Benny Lam - Trapped

According to the Society for Community Organisation, in Hong Kong extra than 2 hundred,000 people live in what are defined as 'Coffin Cubicles,' tiny, cramped areas that residence individuals and also families with youngsters. Pressured through unemployment, rising housing prices and overcrowding, many discover themselves with little preference. Greedy landlords divide up rooms and buildings, illegally, and price more than $USD250 a month for the privilege of living in a room the size of a brush closet.

Photographer Benny Lam's divulge is stunning. He advised National Geographic's Proof that via his collection known as ?Trapped,? He "desires to light up the suffocating dwellings that exist wherein the lighting fixtures of Hong Kong?S prosperity don?T reach. He hopes through making the tenants and their houses visible, greater people will begin taking note of the social injustices of their situations.

?You may wonder why we ought to care, as these people aren't part of our lives,? Lam writes on his Facebook web page. ?They are exactly the people who come into your existence every unmarried day: they're serving you because the waiters in the restaurants wherein you devour, they're the safety guards in the purchasing department shops you wander round, or the cleaners and the delivery men at the streets you bypass through. The handiest difference among us and them is [their homes]. This is a question of human dignity.?

(C) All pics Benny Lam

You can study his tale and view extra pictures at National Geographic Proof.

Observation:

Hong Kong Domestic Workers' Day Off

One Sunday after I become in Hong Kong lately I noticed those congregations of women. They have been sitting at the sidewalk, on overpasses, outside resorts and up-marketplace shopping centres. At first I idea they had been homeless, despite the fact that the sheer numbers refuted that belief. Quickly I found out their testimonies.

Thousands of often girl Filipino migrant people deliver meals, drink and track. They take a seat with their buddies on pieces of cardboard spending the complete day outside, and regularly staying till late into the night. They consume, dance, play playing cards and chat about their lives and their households who they have left behind - often these girls ought to leave their personal children and journey afar to earn cash for the own family.

Most of those women are abused through their employers - underpaid, underfed and forced to live in accommodation that in some instances takes the form of a mat on the floor of a closet. The majority work sixteen hour days.

But a few domestic employees are starting to organise and in latest months there were protests for stepped forward operating conditions.

Yet another glimpse into a aspect of Hong Kong that is in stark comparison to the tourism brochures.

(C) All pictures Alison Stieven-Taylor 2017