Victor Chin

Ayutthaya 11, Victor Chin, 2008

Lee HL talking to a group at Kimi Gallery Cafe

Lucien de Guise’s review of the exhibition

The exhibition Form & Emptiness by Eric Peris and I will continue at Kimi Gallery Cafe, 80 Jln. Burhanuddin Helmi, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, tel 77225585, till middle of September. After that we have been invited to to give a talk about our photographs at the Kuala Lumpur Photography Festival 2008 in October, at Times Square. Later, the pictures will be shown at a Buddhist temple in Brickflelds in November.

Last Saturday, 23, we had a small gathering at Kimi to talk about some technical matters regarding printing digital black and white prints. Mr Lee HL from Applied Imaging gave a vary detailed and interesting talk about his company’s commitment to provide the most up to date and professional services available to photographers by his establishment. Thanks to Lee.

The photographs have been on show for a month now and we had a few write-ups in the local press and we like to share the one writen by Lucien de Guise from the New Sunday Times. His piece appeared on the Sunday 10 August. Eric and I thought that Lucien wrote knowledgeably about our photos and give us a view of his well-informed opinion. Thanks to Lucien.

Photographs has many uses, as we all know, and that is why it is growing in popularity world wide. Of course there is also talk that photographs are not trust worthy documents as sometime it may be made to suit a particular propaganda for its own purposes. Furthermore with digital capabilities today it can cut and past and manipulate images without limits.

But in our views photographs can show us how we have been in the past and perhaps inform us how best to we can use the insights from our history to live for the present.

Philip Chong giving a hand to one of the disable participants

Eric Wong explaining the functions of the camera

Wilfred Tan giving some finer points about using the camera

A photographic workshop at Beautiful Gate

Last Saturday, 16 August, I invited Philip Chong to help me conduct a half day basic photographic workshop for 15 members of wheelchair user organisation, Beautiful Gate, in Petaling Jaya. Philip in turn invited three of his photographer friends (Eric Wong, Wilfred Tan, Mike) to join us.

Beautiful Gate is organising a national photographic competition and this event is open to everyone including a section for the disabled photographers. Those interested please click here for more information about the organisation and the competition.

Our aim was to provide some basic knowledge of the camera, to this disabled group, to enable them to take part in the photographic contest. Not everyone at the workshop has a camera but most of them has a hand phone with a camera and so we worked with whatever they brought along.

Within a few hours we showed them some sample pictures by the guest photographers, we got each of them to take some views of the compound at the Beautiful Gate, we went over some of their shots and make some remarks about how to improve their skills.

Just as there are many things in our daily life which are not disabled friendly, the cameras too  are not designed with the view of the disabled users. But they still make do and get by cheerfully clicking away with their camera at themselves and their environment.

Eric Peris and Victor Chin at their exhibition at KLPac

Some of the friends who come for the discussion on the Sunday 3 August

After a two weeks exhibition at the KLPac, Eric and I decided to keep the show going by moving it to another part of Kuala Lumpur.

Today the exhibition moved to Kimi Gallery Cafe, 80 Jln. Burhanuddin Helmi, Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, and it will be till 31 August (tel: 7722 5585).

In the past two weeks there had been a few visitors to the display at KLPac and we had an interesting discussion about photography and its many complex issues, on the Sunday 3 August afternoon.

There will be another talk on the Saturday 23 August, 2.30pm, Mr Lee H L of Applied Imaging (one of our supporters) will give a talk ‘Black & White photographic printing today’. Applied Imaging is one of the few professional photographic labs in the city and Lee, we think, is one of the best to speak on that subject. This is open and free to anyone interested in the subject.

We hope that this move will give many more people an opportunity to catch up with this unusual display of photos of a common and also a demanding subject – Buddhism and photography today.