Techincal Info
Opening: December 15th 2011, 6 pm to 8.30 pm
Duration: December 16th 2011 - February 18th 2012
Location: VISION QUEST Contemporary Photography piazza Invrea 4 r, 16123 Genova, Italy
Tel.: +39 010 2468771 +39 339 7534993
Gallery Hrs: Wednesday to Saturday 3.30 pm to 7.30 pm and by appointment
Website: www.visionquest.it
Email information: info@visionquest.it
Dorothy Hong will attend the opening reception
Press Release
VisionQuesT gallery is pleased to have Dorothy Hong back with the new exhibition “Saigon Glances”
This project started as a Fashion Shoot in Saigon (Ho Chi Min City) Vietnam, for Fader Magazine. The task was to make a sequence of images as cinematic as possible – almost like a film noir, drawing inspiration from the films of the Chinese director Won Kar-Wai and specifically “In the Mood for Love”.- Hong decides not to use models but local residents who are asked to participate by also suggesting possible locations in the city, away from stereotypes. As always Dorothy Hong searches for that natural, dramatic light that distinguishes her work, she places her subjects in this light, as if to ensure that the same light will shapes, sculpts them. This, as always in her case, enriches the project with other meanings: her narrative choice is expressed through the way she captures and organizes the space around her subjects – in this way she comes close to the cinematic narrative of Won Kar-Wai.- The sensations are concentrated in the atmosphere created and not by the possible affairs of the protagonists. It matters little whether they are normal people or models. These images become the carriers of a Saigon far from what many of us expect to see, a young, intense city in an intersection of light, colour and time passing but leaving behind its visible traces.
“In the end, without the original intention of doing so, I tried to portray Ho Chi Minh City in a light that wasn't so typical and obvious, the way that most people would think of Saigon as being, but tried to cast it in a way that represented more of it's inner city and it's youth, the Vietnam that I had experienced.”
Technical info
C-prints
Cm 28 x cm 35,5 ed. of 10
Cm 50 x cm 75 ed. of 5
Biography
Dorothy Hong was born in 1983 in New York and raised on a very long island off the coast of Manhattan. She attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and graduated with a BFA in 2005. In 2007 she was chosen as one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to watch. She has worked with Giant Magazine and Newsweek, Nike and Sony have been her customers.
Often her photography shows a mixture of historical-artistic influences, like for example the typically American crop and the use of light so dear to the painters of the Italian Renaissance. This peculiarity enhances the expression of her subjects: glances, postures, places, all accentuating the emotions that drive the young generations of today.