Living Pictures
14 April 2023
Photography has become not just a tool for studio portraits or the rise of fine art, but a part of modern society. Living Pictures highlights its changing roles and ambitiously traces the history of Southeast Asian photography from the colonial era to the present day.
The exhibition is being held from 2 December 2022 to 20 August 2023. Featuring over 300 works by more than 90 artists, it captures the contrasting realities of different perspectives. It is housed at the Level 3 Singtel Galleries of the National Gallery Singapore (NGS) and is divided into 5 parts: Colonial Archives, Portraits and Performance, In Real Life, New Subjectivity, and Contemporary Imaginations. Each part explores the roles of photography as the support to empires and identities, in presenting and constructing realities, exploring new ideas, and speaking to the present.
I was intrigued by the last two spaces. From Ly Daravuth’s The Messengers II (2000, 2005) to Heman Chong’s God Bless Diana (2000 to 2004), the works flow with the exhibition. It is filled with innovative artworks – hung and projected on walls, preserved under glass tables, and even sold. Ding Q. Le’s Crossing the Farther Shore (2014), in particular, can catch anyone’s attention with its large mosquito-shaped nets. They are old photographs stitched together – faces and places during the South Vietnam wartime; though, many of these images show moments of peace and happiness. I was particularly interested in this piece because of its historicity. Fragments of time were found and memories were immortalized in photographs. The work has a certain tension to it as it interweaves the intimacy of personal history with the history of war.
Dinh Q. Lê, Crossing the Farther Shore, 2014; found photographs, cotton thread, linen tape, and steel rods. Collection of National Gallery Singapore.
Rich with content, the exhibition is a thoughtful and successful survey of the changing roles of photography in Southeast Asia and the modern world. It prompts viewers to question how photographs shape our reality and how they are testaments to the human experience. It is definitely a must-see-more-than-once show.
