Chun Wai pioneering hypnotic photos of Paris
Adrift in Time by Chun Wai shows eternal images
Old images New journey
Chun Wai shows that some eternal images of Paris have not changed and others that, for him, have been lost forever.
For thirty years, Chun Wai kept the negatives of photos taken while he was a student in France during the 1980s and 1990s stored away in a box.
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The photos were taken in the days before digital photography and were stored the old-fashioned way, on photographic film negatives.
Film negatives ruined
To Chun Wai’s dismay, he found that some of the negatives had deteriorated to the point that the original materials had fully decomposed, and images were no longer visible.
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The best way to store and protect film is to keep them in humidity-controlled cool conditions – not too damp or dry. Unfortunately, Hong Kong’s hot and humid climate is not the ideal environment for film.
Faced with the full loss of some images and the progressive loss of others, Chun Wai decided to restore some of the photographs, and in doing so, also transition them into something more meaningful and profound.
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The results are presented in the exhibition Adrift in Time – Photography by Chun Wai, at The University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong.
Parisian appeal
Working with photographer Chun Wai and with the French May Arts Festival, Dr Florian Knothe, Director of The University Museum and Art Gallery, thought that the exhibition would appeal to the public, as people who have visited Paris will be familiar with many of the scenes in Chun Wai’s photos.
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Commenting on Chun Wai’s work with restoring instead of disposing the negatives that had deteriorated, Knothe said, “…it speaks a lot of Chun Wai’s interest in art and life; that he was more intrigued by the idea that there is this treasure trove of memories and souvenirs and engages with them.”
Chun Wai tour of France
The original photos were taken during a formative period in the photographer’s life. The photos as they were taken then were tourist-like records of a journey.
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As a student, he recorded his experiences studying abroad and documented his wonder and fascination with encountering French art, architecture and culture.
Chun Wai memorialised iconic places
He photographed iconic places that would impact any first-time visitor, the passageway and bridges along the Seine River, the flea markets and the artworks in the Louvre Museum.
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Chun Wai has re-cast these photographs into something different and quite beautiful. When the source photos were taken, they were meant to record memories and to be reminders of his wandering through Paris and other parts of France.
The memories contained within were supposed to be “frozen in time”.
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With the deterioration of those images, he had to face the reality of the passage of time and thirty years that have gone.
Ephemeral time and place
The details that were lost also reflected the loss of Chun Wai’s memories of those places and events.
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With the revelation that the negatives had been “altered” by time and the environment, the photographer was forced to contend with the fleeting and ephemeral qualities of time and the continuous progress of life.
He was there as a young man. Now, he is not that person.
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This thoughtfully curated show, with images chosen meaningfully and purposefully restored, presents Chun Wai’s journey of loss and retrieval.
The resulting prints in the exhibition, produced from images scanned and digitally restored from the original black and white negatives, being not wholly documentary and not newly created, lie somewhere between an almost dream-like place of not being real and yet not imaginary.
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The exhibition is featured in two parts. On the upper level, there are prints with the quality of abstract art showing some of the actual negatives in varying stages of decay alongside images beyond recovery and lost forever.
Romantic black & whites
On the lower level, images that have been recovered and restored are presented.
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The black and whites express a romantic atmospheric appearance which enhances the nostalgic and “French” feel. Many are reminiscent of impressionist paintings with their grainy, blurry and soft-focus qualities.
Chun Wai’s prints are a direct homage to the works by French photographer, Louis Daguerre and the Daguerreotype, the first photographic process, and some of the earliest dated photographs, such as View of the Boulevard du Temple [Paris] taken by Daguerre in 1838.
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Indeed, Chun Wai’s print titled Seine River could have well been a scene from the 1880s, a hundred years earlier instead of when it was taken in the 1980s.
Text Cammy Yiu / Photo Chun Wai
