Ofir Barak | Mea Sharim

Photo © Ofir Barak - All Rights Reserved

You'd be forgiven if you thought that the above photograph was taken in Saudi Arabia or Iran, but it's not. It's a street scene in the Mea Shearim settlement outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in Israel, and part of the photographic project of the same name by Ofir Barak.

We are told that the settlement was established in 1874 and its name is derived from a verse in Genesis 26:12. To this day, it remains an insular neighborhood in the heart of Jerusalem with an overwhelmingly Hasidic population,  and its the streets reminiscent of an Eastern European shtetl. Life revolves around strict adherence to Jewish law, prayer, and the study of Jewish religious texts. It is populated mainly by Haredi Jews and was built by the Old Yishuv (the Jewish communities of the southern Syrian provinces during the Ottoman period).

Interestingly, the numerical value of the words Meah Shearim equals 666, which allegedly has esoteric and kabbalistic meaning in Judaism.

When photographing the settlement and its streets, Ofir Barak felt he had to blend in, and altered his appearance and dress to do so. He grew a long beard, and dressed only in black. A short video of his photographs has been produced to publicize his effort to raise funds to publish a photo book. 

Ofir Barak was born in Jerusalem, Israel, and completed his B.A. in humanities ­(majoring in arts, and history). In 2014, he returned to Jerusalem, in order to photograph a multi layered project that would display the city and its people through his eyes.

A number of interviews with Leica Camera, Lens Culture, and FStop Magazine are available on his website.

Sam Sanzetti | Old Shanghai

Photo © Sam Sanzetti - All Rights Reserved

Working on my forthcoming multimedia project "The Red Qi Pao" has whetted my interest in Shanghai of the 1930s or so, and I stumbled on the work of a photographer born at the start of the 1900 in Russia, and who -for survival reasons - settled for a while in that city 20 years later.

The story is fascinating. Sam Sanzetti (born Sioma Lifshitz), a young Jewish Eastern-European made his way to China with his parents, and worked at menial jobs until having to flee to Shanghai during the Japanese occupation.

He was able to build up the most successful photography studio of the day in Shanghai, eventually opening up four branches throughout the city. When he left China for Israel after 30 years, in the late 1950's, he did so with 20,000 photographs in his bags.

In Shanghai, Sanzetti  started working at the studio of a local photographer, and after a few months became so interested in studio work that when an American business man offered to establish a studio for him in Shanghai he was quite willing to accept the offer. 

Sanzetti was said to be one of the best photographers in China at the time, and had managed to open four studios in 1922, including a flagship studio on old Nanjing Road dedicated to portraits of local residents. He took photographs of people from all walks of life celebrities, film stars, young couples, families and children.

He had married a Chinese and acquired a stepdaughter, but they did not follow him to Israel. He married again in Israel, and his stepson there inherited his pictures and his passion for photography.

A number of links provide more information of Sam Sanzetti's life and work, such as American Photo's The Unlikely Shanghai Portrait Studio of Sam Sanzetti, Shanghailander, and Photography of China.

Hiroshi Watanabe | Kabuki Players

Photo © Hiroshi Watanabe - All Rights Reserved

Kabuki is a form of traditional Japanese drama with highly stylized song, mime, and dance, now performed only by male actors, using exaggerated gestures and body movements to express emotions, and including historical plays, domestic dramas, and dance pieces.

This art form was created by a woman named Okuni, a shrine attendant, in the 17th century. Although greatly influenced by the aristocratic noh, kabuki was devised as a popular entertainment for the masses. A large part of the popularity of the early, all-female performances was due to their sensual nature. These performers were also prostitutes and male audiences often got out of control. As a result, women were banned from performing by the Tokugawa Shogunate, and only older males were allowed to take part in kabuki.

Hiroshi Watanabe, a Japanese photographer, features a wonderful gallery of square format portraits of non-professional kabuki performers in the small town of Nakatsugawa; located midway between Tokyo and Kyoto. He tells us that these perfromers do not get paid for their acting in the kabuki plays and have to dig deep into their pockets to pay for the intricate makeup, costumes and stage backdrops.

We also learn that the small town wasn't large enough to attract the itinerant kabuki troupes, so the town elders decided to have its own kabuki theater, hire the actors, make up artists and stage people. It became the town's tradition since the Edo period.

Hiroshi Watanabe was born in Sapporo, Japan and graduated from the Department of Photography of Nihon University in 1975. He moved to Los Angeles working in Japanese television commercials and later obtained an MBA from the UCLA Anderson Business School in 1993. Subsequently, he started to travel worldwide, extensively photographing and since 2000, has worked full-time at photography.

He produced five self-published books, then published I See Angels Every Day, monochrome portraits of patients and scenes from San Lázaro psychiatric hospital in Quito, Ecuador. This work won Japan’s 2007 Photo City Sagamihara Award for professional photographers. He won many awards for his monographs and books, and was invited to join a group of artists to photograph Venice for a project raising funds for that city.

An Afternoon With The Chinese Opera | Fuji X-Pro 2

Laosheng (老生, old man)

As another string to my 'Chinoiserie' phase, I've been very attracted (visually and culturally) for quite some time to the art of what is generally known as Chinese Opera. I speak no Chinese, but it (in its many different ethnic varieties) being centuries old and performed in colorful costumes make for an visually appeal that's hard to resist capturing with my cameras.

Following my 5-6 hour photo shoot of performers at the Yuet Wan Cantonese Opera Association in Kuala Lumpur a few weeks ago, I resolved to continue on the path that I hope might lead me to another long term project similar to my two year long Hầu Đồng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam, and discovered from an ad plastered all over NYC's Chinatown featuring a Chinese Opera to be held at the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Auditorium on Mott Street.

I booked my seat for May 21 and with my Fuji X-Pro2 and a a panoply of lenses, was at the door half an hour before the opening time of 12:25 pm. I showed my credentials at the door, and asked for Gigi (who was in charge of the show) for her permission to photograph the performers in their full regalia at the end of the show.

Clearly not in the mood of being helpful of allowing anything of the sort, she swatted my credentials and request aside as a bothersome fly, and told me to return at 6:00 pm. Knowing a brush-off when I saw one, I sat in my assigned seat resolving to make the best of the situation, and eyed various other possibilities where i could stand unimpeded. I was the only non-Chinese to attend the show.

I also realized as the performance started that I had a rather good view of the stage and performers, especially as no one was seated in front of me. A stroke of luck to make up for Gigi's ill temper.

One of the first characters to appear on stage was the clown and the old man (the latter possibly the character in the top image). Clowns can be male or female and are sly or stupid, sometimes mean, but invariably ridiculous and laughter-provoking. This one had the audience cackling at some of his repartees.

At various stages of the skits, the Dan (female) performers appeared, and sang and acted quite well. The Dan mainly depict middle-aged or young female roles, who usually wear heavy makeup. Their cheeks are mostly painted red to set off the powdery white of the forehead, nose and jaw. Heavy black greasepaint is used to highlight the eyes and brows, and red color is applied to the lips to demonstrate the classical beauty of Chinese women.

I found that using the X-Pro2 fitted with the 18-135mm Fujinon lens was just perfect to capture the action from my seat, and I had no need to stand or move to another location within the room. Most of my images were shot at an ISO of 1000-1200, higher than what I am accustomed to, but the noise on the images is hardly noticeable.

The Beijing Opera of China is inscribed on UNESCO's World Intangible Cultural Heritages List in 2001 (as is Dao Mau, Vietnam's Mother Goddess religion), and is a national treasure with a history of more than 200 years. It is the most influential sort of traditional operas in China. The performers' make up takes hours to apply, using the color red, purple, black, white, blue, green, yellow, dark red, gray, golden and silver, with each color representing a unique stereotype character.

I intend to pursue this project as far as it will take me. It might come to an abrupt stop should I be unable to find a "connection" to it, but all signs so far are that it may work out.
 

Wing Shya | An Influence

Photo © Wing Shya - All Rights Reserved

"Of course Wong Kar Wai yelled at me. Imagine some guy coming to photograph Leslie Cheung and everything comes out blurred. You'd wonder, what's this guy's attitude?"

Whilst thinking and working on one of my side projects (tentatively known as The Red Qi Pao), I sought the influence of Wong Kar-Wai's cinematography, especially in evidence in his seminal In The Mood For Love. Then discovered the photography of Wing Shya, known for his raw, smoky images from the golden era of Hong Kong cinema.

Reading various of Wing's interviews just a few days ago, I learned that he writes film scripts for his editorials, and that every photograph has a complete, fictional backstory. And this is what I started doing almost a year ago in my initial effort of that sort, and which I titled The Old China Cafe, and whose sequel will be The Red Qi Pao, currently a work in progress. 

I write about this very thing in a previous blog post, saying "My "chinoiserie" phase is not really about fashion and/or attractive models (although it's obviously nice to include them), but about a theme. The theme of "Shanghai-1940" is one that I seek to recreate through still photography and audio, and weave a narrative into stories...akin to short movies."

Wing Shya is a prolific contemporary artist best known for his award-winning film and photography. He studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Canada, and was appointed by film director Wong Kar-Wai to work exclusively as his photographer on several acclaimed films such as Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, Eros and 2046. 

It is out of these experiences that his photographs are imbued with so much  cinematographic styles. He used fashion photography as his primary style, and blurred the boundaries between still photography and movie making with his images appearing as captured stills from a film.

He is one of Asia's most iconic photographers, well known for his evocative images depicting tan erstwhile era of Hong Kong, and I look forward to further study his work. While my own project will not be restricted to a specific location (other than being a Chinatown and following my Chinoiserie phase), his work in fashion and Hong Kong will be of tremendous help.

The Malay Princess | Fuji GFX50s & X-Pro2

I had many chances of using the combination of my newly-acquired ('medium format') Fuji GFX50s with a 63mm fixed lens, along with my favorite go-to camera X-Pro2 and the 16-55mm lens in Kuala Lumpur.

One of these opportunities to put the GFX50s through its paces was to produce a themed project involving a Malay young woman (Ms Sarah Dalina) wearing the traditional dress called kebaya. The kebaya is a traditional blouse-dress combination that originated from the court of the Javanese Majapahit Kingdom, and is traditionally worn by women in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Burma, southern Thailand, Cambodia and the southern part of the Philippines.

Through the help of Ms Shuhada Hasim (herself a talented photographer), we settled on a traditional Malay house located on Jalan Datuk Keramat, in the center of Kuala Lumpur. This lovely house was the perfect backdrop for the project. While traditional Malay houses have diversity of styles according to each states, provinces, and sub-ethnics, there is some commonalities between them such as, being built on stilts (this one was not), having external staircases, partitioned rooms, vernacular roofs and colorful decorative accents.

The Malay Princess gallery consists of 4 GFX50s photographs, and 5 were made with the X-Pro2. Naturally, it'd be quasi impossible for anyone to distinguish between the two as these were processed using Iridient Developer 3 and toned with Color Efex Pro 4.

I particularly liked two of the photographs in this series: the one in which Sarah poses on the house's porch with a lantern in her hands, and the last photograph in which she sits curled up in an antique 'plantation-style' chair enjoying the cool air from an old floor fan behind her.

Thaipusam Festival In Singapore | Hendra Lauw

Here's an interesting and compelling slideshow on Thaipusam, the Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community during January or February. It's mainly observed in countries where there is a significant presence of Tamil community such as India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mauritius Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar.

Thaipusam is a celebration dedicated to the Hindu deity Lord Murugan (youngest son of Shiva and his wife Parvati). 

This particular slideshow was made of a combination of color and monochrome photographs. Thaipusam is a rather striking festival with devotees shaving their heads and undertaking a pilgrimage along a set route while carrying out various acts of devotion, which may include self-mortification by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers.

For my taste, the slideshow relies too heavily on the Ken Burns effect; presumably thought by the photographer to add focus to the scenes, but I thought was distracting. Nonetheless, the slideshow made of photographs from a Fuji X-T1, X-T2, and Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8, XF 23mm f/2.0 and XF 90mm f/2.0 lenses, provides a thorough view of the festival as it occurs.

Hendra Lauw is a Singapore-based photographer. With a background as programmer and IT project manager, he also won the Singapore Best Photography Blog Award in 2010, Best South East Asia Photoblog in 2007 and was finalist for the Best Portrait Photography Photoblog in 2007. He can also be followed on Instagram.

The Travel Photographer's Chinoiserie Phase

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy - All Rights Reserved

Chinoiserie (from 'chinois' the French for Chinese) is a style inspired by art and design from China, Japan and other Asian countries. Fashion designers, furniture makers, wallpaper designers, artists and photographers have consistently been heavily influenced and inspired to produce work that reflect this aesthetic.

My chinoiserie "phase" has been bubbling for quite a while. Certainly influenced by my travels over the past two years to Hanoi, and annual visits to Kuala Lumpur, it was triggered by a couple of visits to The Old China Cafe; an atmospheric eatery in KL's Chinatown's vicinity, and which in turn resulted in a short audio-slideshow bearing the same name.

My immersive experience in the Vietnamese Hầu Đồng rituals for my photo book was another push in this direction, especially with the fashion sense and the ethnic costumes of the mediums.

Yet another influence of mine is In the Mood for Love (Chinese: 花樣年華), the 2000 Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. It's moody theme is especially inspiring. 

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy -All Rights Reserved

Whilst in Kuala Lumpur in the past couple of weeks, I was fortunate to have the help of Stanley Hong; a part-time photographer, who shared my getting involved in a couple of "chinoiserie" projects, and made it possible for us to photograph at various exotic locations such as the Old China Cafe and Opium; both in Kuala Lumpur.

My "chinoiserie" phase is not really about fashion and/or attractive models (although it's obviously nice to include them), but about a theme. The theme of "Shanghai-1940" is one that I seek to recreate through still photography and audio, and weave a narrative into stories...akin to short movies.

What I also enjoyed during my photo shoots in Kuala Lumpur is 'directing'. Whether with Tracy Yee or Carolyn Yin, I conjured a storyline that could fit into a longer one, and that will hopefully and ultimately result into a multi-episode work.

For these photo shoots, I used the Fuji X-Pro2 and the Fuji GFX50s.