After The Fall - Interview with Hin Chua

After The Fall

Interview with Hin Chua

Interview by Joanna Kinowska, Text correction by Ciara O'Halloran

Joanna Kinowska: You've made street photography (They called me a corporate whore), then documentary (Avalanche, After the Fall). I know you don’t like to make categorisations like these: you once answered: "So, let’s just say that I make photographs and that I can be anything anyone wants me to be!" But I need to know your priorities: picture taking, earning money, eating, sleeping, smoking, entertaining, sex? Which comes first and which comes last?

Hin Chua: I’ve never considered The Avalanche or After the Fall to be documentary projects but it’s always interesting to see how others interpret them. But in any case, let’s answer this via by a process of elimination. I don’t smoke, I rarely have time to party and I definitely don’t sleep enough. I love almost any kind of food and cute, intelligent girls together with all the ancillary benefits that come along with them. And while I don’t feel the same way about money, I clearly value it.

 After The Fall © 2011 Hin Chua

Actually, this may be an interesting time to discuss money. I’ve never really had to worry about it too much throughout my adult life. I’ve customarily had the ability to self-fund most of my photographic projects; while an expensive solo show or a high quality self-published book would be beyond my means, the cost of film, air travel or accommodation have never been obstacles. Because I’ve always had a decent salary, I could pay the rent and forget about credit card payments and overdraft limits.

prism #07 sneak peak

A little sneak peak under the hood of upcoming fall issue of prism (#07) before it's launched on the 3rd of September! Cover to be revealed next week.

Stay tuned, it's almost here!

Settlement - Interview with Anthony Haughey

Settlement

Interview with Anthony Haughey, Words by Sarah Allen

Anthony Haughey is a photographer creating some of the most interesting photographic work in Ireland today. Socially aware and strengthened by engaged thinking his pieces stalk the viewer long after they have left the gallery setting.

Contested spaces and migrant narratives are recurrent themes in his oeuvre. One such project entitled 'Disputed Territory' addressed the complex issue of the interconnections between territory and identity. Forgoing the climatic pathos filled moment that is omnipresent in the media Haughey chose to focus on the aftermath of conflict thus prompting a deeper reflection on the part of the viewer.

Settlement V © 2011 Anthony Haughey

In more recent times his work has dealt with a subject still raw in the Irish psyche. For his project 'Settlement', which opened in the Copper House Gallery last October, Haughey took as his subject matter the ghost estates which haunt our country today, standing as cruel reminders of the excesses of the boom era and the economic devastation that followed. Houses connote the presence of people yet these dwellings are deserted, as lonely wrecks they become the epitome of a haunted house. Aside from their evocative subject matter this series of images are visually enthralling and through their beguiling aesthetic reveal in stark relief the effects of economic growth on the landscape.

prism talked with Anthony about his past projects, what drives his practice and his perception of the photographic medium.

Coal Story by Darek Fortas

Coal Story

Images and text by Darek Fortas

I was originally attracted to making images, as it offered a unique ability to escape the very rigid and limiting aspects of linguistics, which we use to communicate everyday. For me, making a new body of work is like inventing a new way of communicating with others, especially when it comes to sequencing images in a photobook.

Solidarity Ex-member
© 2011 Darek Fortas

It happens very often that people overlook things which are important, or interesting when they are situated at their doorstep. It’s also very common that places we are originally from, gain much more significance when we move somewhere else. This is what exactly happened in my case.
‘Coal Story’ is about going back to my own roots. When you live somewhere else, especially if you live in different country, going back to your own roots is about fulfilling a desire to have psychological comfort with moving on.

I was born in Silesia in 1986, the southern and the most industrialised part of Poland. I have a very foggy memory of the communist era, as I was only three years old when it all finished. My dad later told me that basically communism was about waiting. Can you imagine that in the 1980s in the Polish People Republic some people were setting up tents a night before the shop opened just in order to secure their place in a queue, before they could acquire a Russian made TV, or washing machine of their dreams, as it was coming in ‘very limited edition’.

Review: DD/MM/YYYY

DD/MM/YYYY

Review by Ciara O'Halloran

Every month I treat myself. These treats are usually zine shaped and arrive in the post. I have a few favourite online shops I like to browse through and this month I got all my goodies from Good Press Gallery in Glasgow. They do a good thing there, supporting many visual arts with their exhibition space and a huge collection of zines, magazines and photobooks for sale.

The first one to catch my eye was DD/MM/YYYY by Alessandro Zuek Simonetti.

EXodus - Interview with georgia Krawiec

EXodus - Interview with georgia Krawiec

Interview by Joanna Kinowska, Translation by Karol Liver, Corrections by Ciara O'Halloran

georgia Krawiec’s „EXodus” is a layered and complex story that confronts the viewer with the subject of death. The person we see in the photographs is the author herself. She uses pinhole techniques as a language of her emotional expression. Our editor, Joanna Kinowska talks to georgia Krawiec about her series, which has recently been exhibited (Placebo Experiences) during this year’s PhotoMonth Kraków Festival.

EXodus Homeopathy II
© georgia Krawiec

Joanna Kinowska: How did “EXodus” start? What was your main source of inspiration? I’ve heard that words were as important as the conceptual approach to imagery?

georgia Krawiec: In 2006 I was given a book of short nonsense stories, I was absorbed by it and it caused a further exploration of this subject. It’s an amazing kind of literature, grotesque, unclear and obscure, but also full of dark humor. By exploring the subject deeper, I discovered Karen Karin Rosenberg, an American novelist from New Jersey and her short theatre plays, and contacted her soon after. I was mesmerized by the way her main character’s psychological states were drawn by words and phrases, i.e.: “ideal and transcendental”, “liberation through submission”, “wild and capricious”, “manifestation”, “volatile and unpredictable”. While working on “EXodus” I tried to pour all my inspiration into the character and let her tell the story.