I am featured on Saatchi Online Critic's Choice / Weekly Picks by Aaron Schuman – critic, lecturer, photographer and director of SeeSaw Magazine. You can read Mr. Schuman’s review of my work on Saatchi Online Daily Magazine. Also please check Saatchi Online Top 10 Chosen by Aaron Schuman.
What a nice way to start a Friday!
Yet another book about Shanghai, that is Greg Gigard’s Phantom Shanghai, published by Magenta Publishing for the Arts. I have been blab about the Shanghai mania in photography. After all, Shanghai is one of the fast growing cities in the world if not the fastest. The interesting architectures and the changing of the city structure have drawn many western photographers to the city. As a native Shanghainese, I have not taken much photographs of my hometown, but I am thinking about it now from a different perspective.
That being said, when I go back visit China next time, the place I really urge to visit and photograph is the city of Chongqing in Sichuan Province, the fourth municipality after Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin in China. Ever since I watched Wong Kar Wai’s Chongqing Express and Gong Li’s Zhou Yu’s Train, I totally fall in love with Chongqing. I call it the gray city with its muted palette, fog, austerity and a rare sense of metropolitan intimacy.
Here are a few photographs of Chongqing by Sze Tsung Leong.
Speaking of Wong Kar Wai, is this one of most beautiful movie trailers or what?
©Shen Wei
A few months ago, I found this photo when I was looking through my workboxes, a photo I took last spring. I met Becky in a coffee shop in Midtown Manhattan. I knew Becky was a cross dresser from the beginning. She was in a fur coat and a zebra print short shirt, very much stand out in a room full of gray suited office people at lunch.
She brought me to an apartment with a back yard where we had our photo shoot. She was sitting around quietly and appeared a bit nervous. It was probably one of the most silent photo session I’ve ever had, but somehow I remembered very bit of it. I said to her: “I like your hair.” She smirked.
Photo by Muge 木格
My recent discover is an online exhibition titled China Neo, posted by OPPS Felting. The exhibition is included 10 emerging Chinese photographers. I was happy to see Mr. Zhuang Yuan aka Nothing’s work, but my favorite is Muge’s black and white portraits, they somehow reminded me of a little bit Peter Hujar and also the movie Zhou Yu’s Train which starred by Gong Li. I love the sensibility and melancholy in his work, of course the beautiful tonality of his photographs.
