FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE La Galerie Paris 1839 Presents PHOTOBOOK AND PRINT EXHIBITION 11 June to 16 August 2020 Opening reception: Thursday, 11 June 2020, 6.30 - 9pm RSVP: [email protected] La Galerie Paris 1839, 74 Hollywood Road, Central Mon. - Sat.: 11am to 7pm, Sun.: 2 to 7pm La Galerie is delighted to present its first Photobook & Print Exhibition, features the work of 12 Hong Kong and international artists: Nobuyoshi ARAKI, CHAN Wai Kwong, CHOW San, Almond CHU, Catherine HENRIETTE, LAU Chi Chung, TAM Wai Ping, Hideka TONOMURA, WONG Kan Tai, Michio YAMAUCHI, Vincent YU, ZHANG Kechun. We are pleased to collaborate with Brownie Publishing and Mark Pearson on this special proJect. Brownie Publishing: An independent publisher, dedicated to promoting Hong Kong photography art and Photobook. In addition to publishing and online bookstore, Brownie hosts various art and cultural activities, such as exhibition, artist talk, press conference and workshop. Mark Pearson: Mark Pearson founded Zen Foto Gallery in 2009 in Tokyo, Japan, to show and publish fine art photography from across Asia. Since inception, Zen Foto has published over 140 books of photography by artists from Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and occasionally Europe. Mark established Shashasha in 2014 to bring photography and photobooks to the wider international audience through the internet. Mark is also a collector of photography from across the region. PHOTOGSTORY will present an archive of past Hong Kong photography magazine in this exhibition. Special feature artist: LAU Chi Chung (b. 1976, based in Hong Kong) Photobook: Double Gaze, The Only Day; Others: Our Old Textbooks 1 & 2 Print: Double Gaze Installation and video Lau is a visual artist and avid collector of old Hong Kong textbooks. Graduated from The Surry Institute of Art & Design University College (BFA on Interior Design) in 1999, he worked in the television commercial industry as an art director before becoming a full time artist. Lau started out on short films, he mostly works in photography and has exhibited in various international photo festivals. His photography series “Landscaped Artifacts” (2013) has gained him the New Photography Artist of the year from Lianzhoufoto Festival 2013. “I see ‘Double Gaze’, the title of this series, as a point of view as well as a form of action. It involves at least two parties engaging in a dialogue. Photography, thus, is a form of double gaze, with the subJect and obJect entering into a reflective relationship.” – Lau Chi Chung Exhibiting Artists: 1. Nobuyoshi ARAKI (b. 1940, based in Japan) Photobook: Theater of Love Print: Vintage prints Araki was born in Shitaya-ku (now Taito-ku), Tokyo. Araki graduated from photography faculty at Chiba University and worked at advertising agency Dentsu as a commercial photographer. Here, Araki met his future wife, an essayist Yōko Araki. After they were married in 1971, Araki published a book of pictures of his wife taken during their honeymoon titled Sentimental Journey (Yōko died in 1990). In 1972, Araki resigned from Dentsu and became a freelance photographer. His works are held in numerous museum collections including the Tate and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 2. CHAN Wai Kong (b. 1976, based in Hong Kong) Photobook: Oh My Little Girl, Yau Ma Tei Print: Oh My Little Girl, Yau Ma Tei Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1976. He left school at an early age and began to publish his works in 2010. Today Chan has published over thirty photography books and held seventeen solo exhibitions. 3. CHOW San (b. 1982, based in Hong Kong) Photobook: No Teacher But I Can Take Photos Print: No Teacher But I Can Take Photos Chow began photographing in 2010. He participated in Hong Kong International Photo Festival’s “Dozens of photography works - 100FT.PARK's Special” in 2013, and was selected as one of the finalists of the 2nd Hong Kong Photo Book Awards in 2014. He self-published two photobooks in 2018 and a zine in 2019. In 2020, his zine “the flower” was published as one of the “Dying City” series by Mark Pearson. After the release of “No Teacher But I Can Take Photographs” with Zen Foto this year in 2020, Chow has exhibited his works at hk.feature and Kubrick, Hong Kong. 4. Almond CHU (b. 1962, based in Hong Kong) Photobook: Parade, Hong Kong / China Photographers Three: Almond Chu by Wolfgang Kubin, The Urbanites Print: Parade, Sky Photographer/artist. Graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography. Chu sets up his own studio in 1993 and work on art and commercial proJects. He has been invited to exhibit his work in various countries such as Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, USA, Canada, Russia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand. Besides, his work has been featured in numerous international publications. “I attempt a conceptual approach to explore the meaning of existence of human beings in their cities through their interactions with the perverted environment and situation.” – Almond Chu 5. Catherine HENRIETTE (b. 1960, based in Paris) Photobook: Conte d'hiver, Conte d'été Print: Conte d'hiver Born in 1960, Catherine Henriette lives between Paris and le Pays basque. After studying Chinese, she arrived in BeiJing in 1985 and began a career as a press photographer. Engaged by the France Presse Agency at the time of Tiananmen events in 1989, she left China in 1991 and since has worked for various magazines. For around thirty years, Catherine Henriette has been observing China, with its economic, cultural and social evolution. She has seen the transformation of the landscapes and cities. As a firsthand witness to this frenzy, Catherine Henriette paused time with her Leica camera and rolls of film. With the modern China as her backdrop, she has captured the vanishing points and figures, and photographed them like a shifting mirage. 6. TAM Wai Ping (b. 1967, based in Hong Kong) Photobook: Life Pilgrimages Print: Life Pilgrimages Tam graduated from the University of Reading in 1991 and completed his postgraduate studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College of London, in 1995. He is the chairman and co-founder of Art Map, and currently serves as an associate professor in the Department of Fine Arts of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He works in variety of media and is known in particular for his photography, installation and environmental art. Tam’s early work explored the definition of what is real, searching for the situational differences between fact and fiction. Confronted by the hardships of reality, he has always endeavoured to find ways to contextualise history and contemporary life, which has led him to examine the relationship between the ‘individual’ and ‘land’ and, from there, to investigate ‘modernity’ in Asian values. 7. Hideka TONOMURA (b. 1979, based in Japan) Photobook: They Called Me Yukari, Orange Elephant, Die of Love Print: They Called Me Yukari Born in 1979, in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Tonomura graduated from the Broadcasting and Filmmaking Department of Osaka Visual Arts School and began photography in 2002. She published her first photobook “mama love” in 2008 with Akaaka Art Publishing, revealing her deepest pain and the dark, hidden secrets of her family, leaving an unforgettable impression. In 2013 she published “They called me Yukari” with Zen Foto Gallery, in which she documented the life and people around her when she was working as a hostess in Kabukicho, ShinJuku. Actively presenting her work in and out of Japan, her recent publications include “orange elephant” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2015), “cheki” (Morel Books, 2018), and “die of love” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2018). Having experienced cancer diagnosis and treatment herself in 2019, Hideka started the “Shining Woman ProJect”—a portrait project dedicated to women who fight cancer. A publication on the proJect is scheduled to be released near the end of 2020. Her series “mama love” will be exhibited at Maison Européenne de la Photographie in 2021. 8. WONG Kan Tai (b. 1957, based in Hong Kong) Photobook: VaJrayāna, XinJiang 1980 Print: VaJrayāna Wong was born on Lantau, Hong Kong in 1957. He Joined the Hong Kong Press in the late 1970s and started a long career as a photojournalist. He studied photography in the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics. His photographic collections published include 89' Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong Walled City 2002 - 2007, VaJrayāna, The Queen's, Fukushima , Secret 1842~1997 and Xinjiang 1980. His works have been collected by Hong Kong Heritage Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. VaJrayāna is a collection of photos shot by Wong and his partner Ah Fai during a long Journey to Buddhist temples that took them through India, Tibet, Nepal and the Himalayas. Wong first visited Tibet in 1991, having felt inexplicably drawn to the Buddhist country, and planned to conclude his photographic proJect within two or three years. Due to unforeseen circumstances and his and his wife’s growing interest in Tibetan Buddhism, their Journey grew to reach much further than Tibet. Wong still considers the project incomplete. 9. Michio YAMAUCHI (b. 1950, based in Japan) Photobook: Hong Kong 1995-1997 (red) Print: Hong Kong 1995-1997 Yamauchi was born in 1950 in Aichi Prefecture. He graduated from the Second Literary Department (no longer extant) of Waseda University. In 1980, he started night school at the Tokyo School of Photography (currently Tokyo Visual Arts School). In 1982, he graduated from the Tokyo School of Photography and took part in an independent gallery known as Image Shop CAMP, and began showing photographs in photography magazines and independent galleries. Since 1992, he has shot not only in Tokyo, but also in other major Asian cities including Shanghai, Hong Kong and Dhaka.