Photographer 10 | Chien-Chi Chang

Reading biographies has become my way to seek for inspirations. People around you, people you found in the history, is an easy source of great stories. 

Chien-Chi is the first Chinese member of the Magnum Photos. He was known for photographing the life of illegal immigrants in New York which he started on 1992. This series of work were published in at least five different languages for the National Geographic. In 1998, Time invited  Chien-Chi to explore further on the topic of illegal immigrant in New York. This has lead to a rising global concern about the immigrant issues.

One of the later topic which Chien-Chi has explored is about the life of the psychiatric patients. It was happened in Taiwan that these psychiatric patients were chained under the name of religion. Chien-Chi took these patients into his frames as the silent protest for human rights.

Photography has became a special means for Chien-Chi to interpret social issues. He usually pick sensitive and rare topics to present them in a critical and enthusiastic perspective. 

To me, it is not purely about beauty but photography serves to record history, reflect the pasts and raise social concerns.

Photographer 9 | Raghu Rai

When I go to a situation, I see something interesting, and I see the enormity and the size of it, and the complexity of it, and I say “Yes God, you’ve shown me this but it’s not enough for me.” So he says “Alright.” Then I keep walking, then he shows me something more complex and bigger. I say “Yes God, It’s nice. But it’s still not enough for me.” So I go on and on and I don’t accept it, and then he knows this child of his is very demanding and restless. And then he opens up and shows me something I have never experienced before. Then I take a picture and say “Thank you God.”

In 1971, Henri Cartier Bresson visited Rai's exhibition at Gallery Delpire, in Paris. He was impressed by his work and later appointed him as the member of Magnum Photos. This has made Rai the first ever Indian being nominated in Magnum Photos.

Rai's motherland, India, has always been the subject of his photography work. He has documented over 4 decades of history and changing socialdscape of India. India is a very interesting country with beautiful variety of cultural and religious aspects. His work best described the people, their livings and the cultures of India.

Photographer 8 | Alexander J.E. Bradley

Bradley, an Australian contemporary street photographer, living in Paris has irrational fear of being at street level which takes him to the heights and depths of the city.

Bradley has an eye catching series called The Great Spectacle of Milking. This series was done by pouring buckets of milk towards his model and he would capture the immediate response of the model. The backdrops that he has chosen include roadside, railway, theme park grass field and etc. The images in this series has demonstrated some decent use of the ambient light to enhance the subjects. 

The clown is likely to be one of the most interesting subjects that favours me in this series. I like that most of the reaction being captured in the frames are natural and interesting. The shape and the texture of milk poured look like some freezing sculptures that are impossible to be seen in our daily occurrences.

  

Bradley's work has inspired me to look for some interesting moments and to create crazy scenes for my future photography work. Photography should be as fun as the viewer can feel it from the frames being captured.

Photographer 7 | Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson, was a French photographer known for his master class of candid photography before being named as the father of the photojournalism. His phrase the 'decisive moment' has a great influence among photographers. Then important lesson about the 'decisive moment' is that the best opportunities often flash before our eyes and we must be ready at all times to capture the moments.

Cartier-Bresson's images are sometimes shot by random but other times he had to wait for the right person to pass by to complete the scenes. He usually applied geometrical elements in his images. We can see the integration of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines, curves, shadows and etc. He likes to capture the subject along his travel in places such as India, Europe, China, the United States, as well as Africa. Through his work, we observe people of different cultures telling stories that sometimes we encounter in our daily life and other times we had never seen.

SPAIN. Madrid. 1933

SPAIN. Valencia Province. 1933 

France. 1932 

SPAIN. Andulucia. 1933 

INDIA. 1947

INDIA. Autumn 1947

Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

ROMANIA. 1975

Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

Photographer 6 | William Eggleston

Eggleston, an American photographer who is largely credited with the recognition for color photography as a legitimate form to be exhibited in the art galleries. His later work usually features ordinary subject such as old tyres, machines, discarded air-conditioners, vending machines, Coca-Cola bottles, road signs and etc.

The beauty of Eggleston's approach is that he photographs democratically. He would treat every objects as equal. Street photographers usually tend to look for significant characters, interesting gestures and special moments in life as the subject. However, Eggleston is on the opposite. He would frame very ordinary situations and create powerful visual impact out of almost nothing.

Photographer 5 | Philip-Lorca diCorcia

DiCorcia's work usually involves intensive planned staging to take everyday occurrences contained with strong emotion into his frames. His work are categorized as documentary photography with some fictional and cinematic aspects, creating a link between reality and fantasy.

In DiCorcia's early work, he likes to use his friends and family as the subject of his photograph to depict some spontaneous scenes that we encounter in our daily life. Though these photographs look like some random shots, they were carefully staged and planned beforehand. Dicarcia later started to photograph random people on the streets, such as Calcutta, Hollywood, New York, Rome and Tokyo. He would often hide lights in the pavement to illuminate random subjects and isolate them from other people in the street.

DiCorcia's photographs favour me with the dramatic essence of random passers-by poses, insignificant facial expressions, and sometimes contented with black humor. The interpretation of these photographs are usually different depending on the viewer which offers free flow of imagination about the people being captured. This is one of reasons that I like shooting random people on the streets and DiCorcia is definitely one of the role models with great work, such as his series, Hustlers, Streetwork, Heads, and A Storybook Life. 

The Hustlers series (1990-1992) has featured some male prostitutes at Los Angeles, shot against the backdrops of the AIDS pandemic in the late 1980s and early 90s. The latest awards winning movie, Dallas Buyers Club, has the similar backdrops that relate me to DiCorcia's work. The series was shot at the prearrange settings such as hotel room, vacant lot, in between cars, fast food restaurant and etc.

Eddie Anderson, 21 years old; Houston, Texas; $20

Todd M. Brooks, 22 years old; Denver, Colorado; $40

Ralph Smith, 21 years old; Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; $25

Marilyn, 28 years old; Las Vegas, Nevada; $30

Keith Ryan, 36 years old; Bakersfield, California; $30

Chris, 28 years old; Los Angeles, California; $30

Tim, 27 years old; Orange County, California; $30

Storytelling 5 | The New Island

‘3, 2, 1… Jump!’

This jump has brought 2 survivors from a plane crash to land on an island. Justin woke up on the second day after the crash when the sun started to burn his skin. Tim walked towards him and said, ‘Hell, we are at this unknown island, we have to figure out where are we now and how can we escape from here! My name is Tim. I was a policeman in Bosston.’

‘Justin here. I was a zookeeper from Nex York. I saw there is a little fire in the jungle, let’s go and see!’

They walked towards the jungle until they see a group of people gathered in front of a fire to grill fishes for their meal. These people did not wear anything except covering their lower body with leaves. They were exactly what we saw from our history books, primitive humans.

The primitive humans started to be aware of the invasion of two outsiders. They geared up themselves with axes and pikes, surrounded Justin and Tim. They started to make noise. Justin and Tim tried hard to speak to them but they did not seem understand their language.

After several minutes, there was a leader standing out and ordered everyone to point their weapons towards Justin and Tim. They were about to attack on these two invaders. Suddenly, a tiger appeared from nowhere and attacked a few of the primitive humans.

Justin has been well trained to communicate with animals when he was working at the zoo in Nex York. He stood closer to the tiger and patted the tiger’s head. He then held the tiger’s legs for a few seconds. The tiger stopped the attack on the primitive humans and eventually walked away from them.

The primitive humans shouted for relief and they invited Justin and Tim to enjoy their meal. Since then, Justin and Tim were being treated like a King at the island. They provided them shelter and they went hunting for food together. Justin and Tim were seen as God landing on Earth to rescue them.

After several days, Justin tried to educate the primitive humans about how to deal with animals in the jungle while Tim started to train the primitive humans to make a boat. Soon, the boat was successfully built. They tried to sail away from the island but the boat wrecked after several hours.

It was nearly after a year living in the island, Tim and Justin, with the help of the primitive humans managed to build another bigger boat which was claimed to be tougher than the previous boat. They sailed across the ocean until they found another island which they were familiar of, Kawaii. It is the second largest island in Bosston, where modern population situated.

Tim and Justin managed to bring all the primitive humans they have found from the island to the modern city. Over years, they developed the island and name the island as Tin Island.