Category Archives: Photography

Cyber photographer Chayan Khoi returns to Geneva

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Remember Chayan Khoi? The cyber photographer extraordinaire is back in Geneva with his new exhibition Le Temps Suspendu (Time in Suspension). Here are some snaps and thoughts from Wednesday’s vernissage at Galerie Evartspace.

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Working with images, frames and scrapbooks (I love these!), Chayan’s new series is as bizzare and intriguing as his last. He keeps challenging our imagination, but the punchy steampunk is gone and everything feels – if possible – more suggestive and spiritual.

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Chayan’s work projects a journey through the past, the present and the future. It takes me to distant, futuristic, exciting, frightening and dystopian places. But it always leaves me with a feeling that I am exactly where I need to be at this very moment in time.

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If you happen to be in Geneva sometime between now and 30 November, I suggest that you swing by Grand-Rue 12 (not far from the St. Pierre Cathedral) for a visit. It is a great exhibition in a nice part of the town. Enjoy!

Sebastião Salgado’s penguins (and other social animals)

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I am in Sweden for a week. I go to see an exhibition by the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. Question: do I really want to see more images of penguins in cold sea and ice landscapes? Answer: Yes! If they are photographs taken by Sebastião Salgado. I stroll into the Swedish Museum of Photography. My jaw drops. I am simply stunned by the images. This is a masterclass in composition, story telling and developing. “Award-winning” is an inadequate description.

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Saunders Island is inhabited by penguins of several different species, notably the chinstrap (Pygoscelis antarctica), which number over 150,000 couples. South Sandwich Islands. 2009.

I take photos of the photos. My camera feels cold. My fingers feel cold. I shiver. How is it possible that these beautiful images take me to the most inhospitable part of the world, focus on a cute fluffy swimming flightless bird and yet somehow what arrives in my mind’s eye is the environmental cost of human over-population?

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Zavodovski Island is home to some 750,000 couples of chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) as well as a large colony of macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus). The island’s active volcano is visible in the background. South Sandwich Islands. 2009.

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A colony of chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) at Bailey Head on Deception Island. Antarctic Peninsula. 2005.

Back home, I take a look at Sebastião’s website. I have an insight to the work of a truly great photographer but also a photographer whose mission involves putting his work to work. These extraordinary penguin images are part of “Genesis” started in 2004; it is a bigger project about a pristine natural world and invites consideration of human’s interaction with it.

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Chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) on an iceberg located between Zavodovski and Visokoi islands. South Sandwich Islands. 2009.

Sebastião’s concerns – and his projects – go further than the environment, his images tell of the dispossessed and injustices in all corners of the globe. They punch. Hence his photo essays carry titles such as “Coffee,” “Migration,” “Polio,” and “Workers.” He also runs a “Smiling Children Project” via his Facebook page. Too sugary? Maybe. But with this morning’s news screaming the awfulness of Iraq, Gaza, Ukraine and Syria, I’m happy to be reminded of a common attribute that binds us social animals together rather than the all too common brutality that pulls us apart. Question: Can images alone bring about change in the world? Answer: Yes! If they are photographs taken by Sebastião Salgado.

Robert Ramser’s Holy Creatures

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Calmly sipping a cup of Darjeeling tea, Robert Ramser told me his advice to any aspiring photographer. “Stay with your own style. It is better to take a bad photograph in your own style than a good photograph in someone else’s style.” In his series “Holy Creatures” – the subject of his up-coming exhibition – he certainly stays with his own style. But you will not find a bad photograph. They are all developed by hand from medium-format film. They are beautiful.

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The Philosopher, Vrindavan 2008

Last year, I met Robert at his home. I wrote about his mesmerising Asian photography. He told me that, on one of his photographic journeys to Mumbai, India, he became fascinated by the spiritual presence of animals. He had taken refuge from the heat in a small museum and discovered a series of miniature paintings illustrating the ancient Panchatantra fables from the Mogul era. He explained “In Hindu, Jain and Buddhist philosophies, every living thing is a soul incarnated in a material body. I was inspired by the exquisite manner these artists showed the presence and the dignity of the animals…”

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The Widow, Vrindavan 2008

Robert’s images are delicate and enduring. They have captured the animals’ indifference to humanity. I am sure that if I look for long enough, souls will appear! And there is atmosphere. I feel heat and humidity. I smell dust and open drains.

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The Lights of Paradise, Varanasi 2013

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The Capuchin in the Alcove, Vrindavan 2008

A hallmark of Robert’s Asian photography is that it is difficult to imagine the presence of a photographer in the scene. However, at 6.00pm on 5th June, Robert will definitely be present at the opening of “Holy Creatures” at the prestigious photo gallery Fotografika at 10, rue Borgeaud in Gland (between Geneva and Lausanne.) The exhibition lasts until 26th July. Go!