art – Page 3 – Hong Kong Lucida

Singapore as Comfortable Grid

Posted on September 6, 2014September 6, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

I’ve been reading Alexander Nehamas’ Only a Promise of Happiness and some of his words jumped out at me:

Beauty always remains a bit of a mystery, forever a step beyond anything I can say about it, more like something calling me without showing exactly what it is calling me to. Since no words are enough to convince me that something is beautiful (or its opposite), it is a call I can only hear on my own, beyond what anyone can say to show that making it part of my life might be worthwhile. (pg. 78)

We’re in the end looking at and listening to that innermost voice calling out to us … I suppose that’s a good description for anyone who knows what it means to be an artist, poet and/or street photographer.

Again, from Nehamas:

Even the narrowest judgment of beauty has far-reaching consequences and makes a difference to one’s mode of life. What such a life will bring is impossible to predict and, once it has brought it, difficult to evaluate. You can’t know in advance the sort of person it will make you and you can’t ever be sure of the worth of the person you have become. You can’t even be certain that you will eventually consider what you find through the pursuit of beauty to have been worth your while. (pg. 129)

I suppose all we could do is wait and see and hope to grow into the sort of person we’d want to be…

Sometimes it is tempting to fall into that path of least resistance, choosing a course of action simply because it is there and it is a well-worn path.

Go into a shop, buy a thing, any thing.

And sometimes it is after exhausting a particular option that one begins to want more…

What does it mean to flourish?

How may one begin to understand how one path leads to another?

Are we caught in a web of our own making?

Is there room to maneuver?

Or perhaps the grid is comfortable, after all.

A sort of ready-made architecture of success beckons.

We see.

We try to make sense out of this.

We look into ourselves and hope we find something significant…

Open-edition prints available here.

Shanghai On the Move

Posted on July 20, 2014July 18, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

The overall theme for this post is Shanghai’s speed and mobility.

I realize I have a preference for a “flawed” aesthetic.

Even with a digital camera (Canon 600D), I’m still going for the same vision as with my film compacts.

In fact, in some ways, I’m treating my Canon 600D like a film compact…

If you view the image at full size, you could see the grain almost breaking up the picture.

There’s a symmetry to this composition that I like.

It’s not focused correctly, just as we see things in glimpses.

There’s still a lot of construction going on in Shanghai.

This is visual evidence that the metropolis (population 23 million) is still growing!

It’s a city on the move.

With people on the move.

The three big Chinese characters are translated literally as “China dream”.

A city is the dream of its people made manifest.

The Chinese characters on the left can roughly be translated as “caring for the youth of the future” … I think.

The ones on the top right means “building the nation’s most eminent city”.

Where would Shanghai (or China) be, economically and politically, in the next 5-10 years?

This is one of the entrances to the Xujiahui campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where I gave a talk entitled … lo and behold, “The Practice of Poetry and Street Photography” at a conference called Modern and Postmodern Arts: China and the World.

People pose here, at the campus gate, for photographs.

One of my favourite Chinese idioms – “a hundred years to cultivate a human being”.

The full idiom is something like “it takes ten years to cultivate a tree, a hundred to cultivate a human being”.

That’s a library, if i remember correctly.

Waiting.

Still waiting.

Now crossing – a nation of people on the move.

Places to go, people to see, things to do.

The next 8 photographs were taken by my son, though of course, I’m the one responsible for the high contrast monochrome.

The first six were taken when we were in one of the spheres of the Shanghai Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

The next two pictures (by my son) were taken at Urban Planning Exhibition Center.

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I think he’s developing a good sense of composition here.

Thanks for dropping by, and buy my open edition prints at my Saatchi Art page!

Shanghai Digital Monochrome: Power Station of Art

Posted on July 18, 2014July 19, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

We went to the Power Station of Art, and I happily brought my 600D with my nifty-fifty lens along do a a bit of indoors street photography.

He’s either an artist or a priest…

A photograph of a person taking a photograph… that’s the master trope of this post.

I am looking at people who are looking at art.

Perhaps a case can be made that I am also making art of my own, out of art itself.

This is art quoting art.

Fabric mirroring fabric…

Museum goers are also performing a kind of art…

Someone doesn’t like Dickens… or perhaps this is a comment on China…

Don’t ask me what it means…

See for yourself.

And have a dialogue.

Hmm…

The gift shop is tastefully done.

The helicopter view of the gift shop.

The real is a shadow … the pose is clear.

Participatory art… we like to see ourselves in art.

Is art real?

Always read what it says…

An owl of Minerva…

So many texts and subtexts…

The elephant in the room…

Even the pipes look arty!

Is this art?

Can this be art?

Better consult the catalogues…

Is it in the book?

We need to do some close reading.

There’s a decorum here, for the sake of the decor…

We need to find out more…

Look some more…

Pay close attention.

Look up…

Look down at the screen.

The answer is in the smartphone.

Thanks for dropping by, and don’t forget to check out my Saatchi Art page!

Why Street Photography?

Posted on May 26, 2014May 26, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

Why street photography?

1. Because it is always work in progress.

2. Because we’re all looking for something.

3. Because we’re waiting.

4. Because it deals with the mundane, and reality can be mundane.

5. Because it’s another way of looking at ourselves.

6. Because it is artful waiting.

7. Because we’re born to say “Let there be art”.

8. Because it’s a way, like any other.

The best camera is the one you have with you

Posted on May 23, 2014June 17, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

I do have a routine, and go to the same few places time and again.

These are all taken within a week or so on the same roll of film, with my Minolta AF-C loaded with Kodak ColorPlus 200.

My usual haunts are Shamshuipo and Wu Kai Sha beach.

That’s a cooking stove by a village house along Wu Kai Sha beach.

They say the best camera is the one you have with you.

I have cult rangefinders such as the Canonet QL 17 GIII, Yashica GX and the Leica M6.

But nowadays I’m in a point-and-shoot and snapshot-aesthetics phase.

So it’s either a Contax TVS, Olympus XA2, or Minolta AF-C.

These are to me signs of life, these ropes and bricks, arranged as if for display.

Sometimes, I strike up a conversation with people with my broken Cantonese.

This gentleman runs a BBQ site at Wu Kai Sha beach. He was trying to convince me to book a BBQ pit for my family for the coming weekend and as a bonus, he would throw in a few complimentary pieces of cuttlefish.

At Shamshuipo. That’s one of my favorite pit stop. Whenever I walk past, I’d try to take a shot.

It seems we oscillate between desire and labour all the time.

We discipline ourselves to make sure the plumbing works.

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