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5 artworks at Mizuma Gallery that will change how you view photography

SINGAPORE — In a time when just about everyone has a digital camera of reasonable quality in their smartphones, and apps that allow for simple photo editing, artists working with photography have continued to push the medium to its limits. As this exhibition’s title puts it, perhaps what drives them is, “Why are we doing what we are doing?” Here are five artworks that might defy what you would expect to find at a photography exhibition.

SINGAPORE — In a time when just about everyone has a digital camera of reasonable quality in their smartphones, and apps that allow for simple photo editing, artists working with photography have continued to push the medium to its limits. As this exhibition’s title puts it, perhaps what drives them is, “Why are we doing what we are doing?” Here are five artworks that might defy what you would expect to find at a photography exhibition.

 

1. Camera Obscura by Iswanto Soerjanto

With every passing year, camera manufacturers tout increasing megapixel count, ever-more refined lenses, and ever-more sensitive image sensors. It is no surprise, then, that some artists buck the trend of ever-greater technological sophistication, turning instead to the origins — and some might say the foundations —of photography. Iswanto Soerjanto’s Camera Obscura is, in fact, an array of 20 such cameras, constructed in a manner reminiscent of Google Cardboard. Its insectile, multi-faceted gaze also calls virtual reality to mind — an odd achievement for an example of the earliest photographic technology.

 

2. A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World series by Robert Zhao

For the longest time, there was an implicit association between photography and truth — the idea being that cameras cannot lie, with the film or sensor faithfully recording the world it is exposed to. However, with the increasing ubiquity and simplicity of photo manipulation, whole new horizons have opened up, not just of photography’s ability to report truth, but to distort it. Robert Zhao’s long-running series, for instance, incorporates subtle photo-manipulations to merge bio-fictions with examinations of the environmental degradation of the world.

 

3. Vakantie in Indonesie and Childhood Memories by Agan Harahap

Although these two bodies of work appear to address rather different subjects, there is an underlying core that unites them, apart from the technical similarity in the use of photo-manipulation. In both these series, Photoshop is used to merge images that would not otherwise occupy the same frame: Nude or bathing-suited Europeans at their leisure, merged with scenes of pastoral Indonesia a century past, and everyday snapshots of Indonesia in the 1980s, blended with American celebrities in their youth. In both cases, there is a sense of compelling plausibility to these images, yielding a sense of dislocation not unlike the purported Mandela Effect.

 

4. Manda-la series by Usami Masahiro

If there is one thing that smartphone photography prizes, it is spontaneity. Until fairly recently, you could upload pictures on Instagram without using the app, for instance. Spontaneity begets some notion of authenticity and lived experience, now ruthlessly mined and commodified by social media. Usami Masahiro’s Manda-la series, created over the course of the past 20 years, is anything but spontaneous, showcasing a methodical sense of organisation that forms an interesting contrast with the carnivalesque visual riot of the Manda-la series. From a hazmat-suited cherry blossom viewing party in Fukushima, to what looks like a colossal outdoor maid cafe centred on a man in a hospital bed, the scale and intensity of these images verge on the Boschian. Bruce Quek

 

Why are we doing what we are doing? runs until Oct 9, 11 am to 7pm from Tuesdays to Saturdays. 11am to 7pm on Sundays. Closed on Mondays. Mizuma Gallery, 22 Lock Road #01-34. Admission is free.

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