Foreign Familiar Photography Exhibition Opening

Despite my busy and hectic day, I managed to drop by the opening of the Foreign Familiar Photography Exhibition at the Shaw Hallway, Level 4 of the Shangri-La Plaza. I may not be good at taking photographs but I’d like to think that I have an eye for good and interesting photos. And I did find it interesting that featured in this exhibit are the works of nine Western photographers who have lived and worked in Asia. And their photos of various Asian sights and scenes seen through their perspective drew me in to this exhibit.

Photographer Wolfgang Bellwinkel

The opening was graced by one of the photographers and also the curator of the exhibit, Wolfgang Bellwinkel of Germany. His work entitled Babel featured the cropped shots of unfinished buildings in Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore. Other photographers featured in the exhibit were Swiss Ferit Kuyas with his City of Ambition, England born Olivier Pin-Fat with his Space-in-Between, Marrigje de Mar of Netherlands with Home, German Nick Nostitz with his Bangkok Twilight, French Bruno Quinquet and his Salaryman Project, American Peter Steinhauer with Reflections of Chaos and Calm, French Laurence Leblanc with her Rithy, Chéa, Kim Sour et les autres, and Swiss Graziella Antonini with her Voyage imaginaire au Japon

It was very interesting to see the Asian sights, culture and people captured by the lenses of Westerners. I particularly liked the Salaryman Project by Bruno Quinquet since I’ve already been fascinated by the salaryman ever since I’ve came across that term while reading a manga about them. I was also drawn to City of Ambition by Ferit Kuyas with his hazy photographs of splendid buildings and structures in China. It made me wonder if the haziness was caused by fog or by smog. And then, there is Bangkok Twilight by Nick Nostitz with probably the most disturbing shots in the whole exhibit and one has to see them in order to get what I mean.

This exhibit runs until November 20, 2011. Organized by the Delegation of European Union in the Philippines, Goethe-Institut Philippinen, the Alliance Française de Manille and the Embassy of Italy, in cooperation with the Embassy of Switzerland and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Foreign Familiar Photography Exhibition heads to Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Ho Chi Minh and Phnom Penh after its Manila leg.