Foreign Guest Directors/Curators/Photographers
Hailing from Lyon in France, Alain holds a Master of Fine Arts in Photographic Print-making from the Parson School of Design, New York. As a photojournalist, Alain has also contributed numerous articles and photographic stories for major magazines such as Life, Newsweek, Fortune, and Time Magazine. His other accolades include Co-founder and Artistic director of the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China; Curator of the Chinese photography exhibition at the Arles Photography Festival in France; Co-founder, Artistic director, and curator of the Guangzhou Photo Biennial, Guangdong Museum of Art in China; as well as Curator and Vice director of the Lianzhou International Photo Festival in China. Alain is a festival Portfolio Reviewer. He will also be part of the Curatorial Forum and will conduct a workshop on Conceptual Photography, an evening presentation on Contemporary Trends of Chinese Photography, and a lecture on Editing your Work.
Alex Moh is a self-taught photographer and specialises in black and white photography. He was the President of the Photographic Society Petaling Jaya (1997-1999) and has been a member of the Royal Photography Society of Great Britain since 1995.
A founding member of the Silver Gelatin Photography Group and Zone System Technique, Alex has participated in many international and local exhibitions and expeditions. He was recently the Project Coordinator and Curator for the project MALAYSIA @ 50: A Day in the Life of Malaysia under the patronage of the Ministry of Arts, Culture & Heritage Malaysia, celebrating 50 Years of Independence. He also coordinated and curated Out of Berlin…passthepicture, a worldwide project he initiated together with the Goethe Institute Malaysia. Alex is one of SIPF’s Portfolio Reviewers, and will be giving an Evening Presentation entitled Malaysian Photography – History and Beyond. He is also a part of the curatorial Forum.
Curator Ark Fongsmut received his MA in Fine Art Administration and Curatorship from Goldsmiths College, London, and his MA and BA in Political Science from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.
He has been a curator at Bangkok University Gallery, Bangkok since 2000 and has produced many important exhibitions and initiations, including the annual Brand New Project and Artist Residency Program. With insight and experience in the field of contemporary Thai photography, Ark was appointed chief curator of the 2004 and 2006 Month of Photography – Bangkok, a major international photography exhibition.
One of the vocal contributors to critical writings on contemporary Thai art, Ark has published in a number of exhibition catalogues and books, including “Art Now,” his latest collections of art writings. He has also contributed to many publications, namely, Esquire (Thai Edition), MARS, CRUSH and East Bridge, an online Korean art magazine.
He was a recipient of several Curatorial Fellowships and Residencies including BIZ Art Residency (Shanghai); Association Francaise d’Action Artistique Fellowship (Paris); The Alliance Francaise Residency (Bangkok) and The Japan Foundation Fellowship (Bangkok and Tokyo).
Chow Chee Yong graduated with a BFA (Honours) degree in Photography in 1994 from Western Michigan University, USA. In 1998, he received the JCCI Art Scholarship, which brought him to Tokyo where he pursued his graduate studies. He received his MA (Distinction) degree in Photography in 2001 from Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan. He has participated in about 30 solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States.
Chee Yong’s works have been featured in publications such as Passages North (USA), Photo Asia (Singapore), OP Editions (Hong Kong), m2photosynthesis (Singapore), Light Trails (Singapore), Things unseen, Places not been (Singapore), 11+1 (Japan), Nippon Camera (Japan), Asahi Camera (Japan) and Photographs by the Next Generation: Young Portfolio (Japan), among others. His first publication, “30th Feb” a hardcover book of his Surrealistic Images, was recently launched in Singapore in conjunction with his 6th solo exhibition.
His original prints can be found in the Permanent Collection of Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan), Epigram Pte Ltd (Singapore), Kay Ngee Tan Architects Gallery (Singapore), Center of Photography (Japan), Back in Time International (USA), OP Editions (Canada and Hong Kong), Rothmans of Pall Mall (Singapore) and other various corporate, private and museum collections in Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States.
He currently teaches photography in the Department of Visual Communication at Temasek Design School in Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore).
Dinh Q. Le holds a Masters in Fine Arts in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and is an award-winning photographer whose work has been exhibited worldwide at prestigious festivals in New York, Houston, Lyon, Venice, and Seoul, amongst others.
Besides being an artist, Le also co-founded the Vietnam Art Foundation (VNFA) based in Los Angeles, an organization that supports Vietnamese artists and promotes artistic exchange between cultural workers from Vietnam and around the world, and with funding from the VNFA, Le and three other artists co-founded San Art, the first not for profit gallery in Ho Chi Minh City. He is currently on the peer committee for Art Network Asia, and is a member of the Asia Society’s international council.
Le is one of SIPF’s Portfolio Reviewers, and he will be giving an Evening Presentation entitled Projects of Dinh Q. Le, as well as a lecture entitled Thought processes behind my Works.
Florence Baur (born 1981 in Munich, Germany) studied Cultural Studies and History of Art at the Ludwig Maximillians University in Munich, Germany finishing in 2006.
Next to her studies she worked at the Kupferstichkabinett in Dresden, Germany with its huge photographic collection, Christie´sin Munich, and Galerie f 5;6. She also worked as a tutor at the department of Art History at LMU. Since 2006 Florence Bauris a director at Gallery f 5;6 in Munich, specializing in contemporary photography.
Françoise Callier has worked as a photographer’s agent, working with Helmut Newton, Jean-Paul Goude, Max Vadukul and others. From 1990-1998, she was handling the press promotion and portfolio review at Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan. From 1995-98, she was also the French correspondent for Corbis, handling the portfolio reviews to find photographers for the agency. Since 2006 she has been working as one of the Curators and program coordinater at Angkor Photography Festival, held annually in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Frederick Baldwin is a co-founder of FotoFest® in 1983 and has served as the organization’s President from 1984-2001. In 2001, he became Chairman of FotoFest’s Board of Directors. He is responsible for the organizational and financial development of FotoFest® from 1984-1991. In 1988-1990, he organized FotoFest’s education program, Literacy Through Photography. From 1991-2004, he has shared responsibility for FotoFest’s artistic programming as well as administration, finances with FotoFest® Artistic Director Wendy Watriss. In 1994, he initiated an international collaboration of 22 photography festivals, resulting in the Festival of Light 2000.and an ongoing international network.
Mr. Baldwin is responsible for inaugurating FotoFest’s school-based education program, Literacy Through Photography, by bringing photographer-educator Wendy Ewald
from New York to Houston to do writing and photography workshops for FotoFest. In 1990, FotoFest converted her workshops into a full-time school based curriculum and teaching program.
Fred Baldwin has had an extensive career in photography both as a professional photographer and professor. From 1957 to 1982, he worked as a photographer on international commissions for magazines such as LIFE, National Geographic, GEO, STERN, Time and the New York Times. His award-wining work covers subjects such as the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia, rural poverty in the Carolinas, Arctic fishermen in the Lofoten Islands, the Peace Corps in India and wildlife in the Arctic. In 1971, he began a photographic documentary and oral history project in Texas with Wendy Watriss. The project resulted in numerous exhibitions, fellowships (National Endowment for the Humanities, The Rockefeller Foundation), and the book Coming To Terms, The German Hill Country of Texas (Texas A&M Press, 1991). In 1981-82, he taught documentary photography in the School of Communications at the University of Texas in Austin. From 1982-87, he directed the Photojournalism Program at the University of Houston Central Campus. From 1964-66, he was director of the Peace Corps in Sarawak. From 1950-51, he was a Marine infantryman in Korea and was wounded and decorated numerous times. He is a member of the American Leadership Forum.
Gael Newton is Senior Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra, and author of various monographs and numerous articles on Australian and international photographers, including the NGA’s Bicentennial Year history of Australian photography; ‘Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1838-1988′(1988). She is currently working on an exhibition on aspects of the history of photography in the Asia-Pacific region for the Canberra Photography festival in winter 2008.
Gael is a festival Portfolio Reviewer, and will be giving an Evening Presentation entitled Picture Paradise: The First Century of Photography in the Asia-Pacific Region 1840s-1940s, and will also be part of the Curatorial Forum.
ISA LORENZO has shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, and the Thomas Werner Gallery, all in New York City; at the UNESCO House in Paris; and at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and Silverlens Gallery in Manila. Her work is collected worldwide. She is currently the Creative Director of Silverlens, a gallery specializing in photography and new media based in Manila. Lorenzo is also a working photographer who clients include designers such as Bea Valdes, magazines such as Marie Claire, Time, and Newsweek. She has photographed three books and counting.
KIMMO LEHTONEN (M.Phil., MA SocSc) is a lecturer in the international Masters programme on Digital Culture at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is a founding member of The Centre for Creative Photography and has been a director of the same association since 1994. He is a member of national network of photographic centers, and has participated production of more than 200 photographic exhibitions. For the past 15 years Lehtoneen has been in a curatorial team of the international photo-based trienniale LUMO. He is a member of Nordic Network on the history and theory of photography. Together with Laurence Short, Lehtonen directed UK – Finnish exhibition exchange JATULINTARHA (1998 – 2000) and edited a CD-ROM publication for the project. Lehtonen is also the Finnish delegate in CHANGING FACES (2005 – 2007) EU- Culture 2000 funded collaboration between Finland, Germany, Slovakia, The Netherlands and UK. In October 2006 Lehtonen directed SHIFTS, Changing Faces 2# Conference in Jyväskylä, Finland. His academic specialism covers photographic art and theory, Finnish and European photographic history, visual analysis and rhetoric. He has written and edited several books and articles on photography, both for Finnish and international audiences. He will be giving an Evening Presentation on Contemporary Finnish Photography, and is a Portfolio Reviewer for the festival.
Although his strongest work includes gritty black and white beauty and realism, Thai photo-artist Manit Sriwanichpoom is best known internationally for his iconic ‘Pink Man’ series, his high gloss comment on contemporary Asian aspirations. His solo shows include ‘Bangkok in Pink’ at the Yokohama Museum of Art (Japan); ‘Pink Man in Paradise’ at Monash University (Australia) and Valentine Willie Fine Art (Malaysia); ‘Repertoire of the Innermost’ at the Plum Blossom Gallery (Singapore); and ‘Beijing Pink’ at the Highland Gallery (China). His works are held by the Maison européenne de la photographie (Paris), the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), the Singapore Art Museum and private collectors. In 2002, he was named one of the world’s 100 most interesting emerging photographers by Phaidon Press in their book BLINK. In 2007 he was awarded the Higashikawa Overseas Photographer Prize.
Manit is a festival Portfolio Reviewer, and will be a part of the Curatorial Forum, as well as give a workshop on Conceptual Photography, as well as an Evening Presentation on Thai Photography – MoP Bangkok 2008.
Pablo Bartholomew is based in New Delhi, India. He divides his time between photography, running long term photography workshops, and managing a software company that specialises in photo database solutions and server based digital archiving systems. Between 2001 and 2003, he ran photography workshops for emerging photographers in India with the support of the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam. Pablo has also photographed societies in transition in different locations, and has won the World Press Photo award for his series Morphine Addicts in India (1975) and the World Press Picture of the Year for the Bhopal Gas Tragedy (1985). He has also taken part in several international exhibitions and has been published in Newsweek, Time, National Geographic and Geo among other prestigious magazines. Pablo will be running a workshop on Documentary Photography, and will be giving an Evening Presentation entitled Discovering Pablo and his Personal Work. He is also a Portfolio Reviewer for the festival.
Paul Kohl is a Visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University where he is teaching photography, both digital and analogue. His own work involves scanned negatives that he prints on a variety of archival papers using Epson printers. He has a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a MA from Purdue University. He has studied digital printing with Jon Cone at Cone Editions and John Paul Caponegro at the Maine Center for Photography. He has exhibits his prints internationally and has won several grants including a National Endowment for the Arts Photographer’s Fellowship, a Maryland State Art’s Council Grant and an Artist in Residence at Awagami Paper Factory in Japan. His work is part of the permanent collections of the Fogg Museum (Boston), San Francisco MoMA, University of Missouri- St. Louis, and numerous private collectors. Before coming to Singapore, he spent ten years in Japan where, besides his photography, he practiced Aikido, Jodo (Japanese Staff Fighting) and Tai Chi.
Robert Blake is the Chair of the General Studies Program, a photographer, an Emmy Award-winning videographer, curator, and author. He is the recipient of the 1999 Etant Données grant for the Paris exhibition of his color work Legend. He is the co-founder of Hybridaxe, a performance group employing film, sound, text, and movement. As a lecturer and visiting artist, Blake has worked with the Ecole Nationale de la Photographie in Arles, France and the C.E.V.P. in Vevey, Switzerland. He has received numerous research and artist grants from the French government and has exhibited and taught widely in the United States and Europe.
Terence Yeung is an independent curator. He is trained both as an artist and designer. He graduated in postgraduate fine art studies from Goldsmiths’ College and Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. He is a specialist in Print and Photo Media and is lecturing in imaging theory and communication design at Temasek Design School, Singapore.
Terence is both active in exhibiting and curating. His photographic works had been exhibited local and abroad. His work is selected into the opening exhibition of the Alexander Library Opening Exhibition by UN. The European House of Photography selected his photographic works for the Singapore edition of The Month of Photography in 2003. In June 2004, he was in a group photography exhibition called ‘The Month of Photo 2004’ as part of the Singapore Arts Festival.
He comes from a diverse background of practice before trying his hand at curating. Since then he has been curating for CPVI,2001 (Centre of Photography and Visual Imaging, Singapore), Singapore Art Museum 2002, the Esplanade 2003, the Goethe Institut, Singapore, and other alternative spaces. He is the creative adviser to the Biopolis, One North Public Art Programme, and master plan by Zaha Hadi, 2002-2004. He has been an important agent of promoting art and photography in the local context, his guerilla movement has been influencing and engaging the main stream establishment to continue the evolving cultural dialogue of and design.
He is currently commissioned by the Singapore Youth Council to create a sculpture for British High Commissioner to Singapore representing the youth of Singapore in this very important milestone in the UK and Singapore relationship. He is also working on his latest “REAL Project” concerning the blurring boundaries of Art/Design with four groups of artists and designers in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, and Taipei.
Wang Xi is a photojournalist and is actively involved in the photography scene in Dalian. Currently, he is the course manager for the Master of Arts program in International Photojournalism at the Dalian Medical University Image Art College (in association with the University of Bolton, UK) in China. He holds a Master of Arts in Photography from Bolton University, and has shot numerous landscape and documentary works in Nanning, Guangxi. He used to work for local NGOs like CSAPA (China Small Animal Protection Association) and BHAEEC (Beijing Human and Animal Environmental Education Center), and his photos have been widely used in the Chinese media.
Wendy Watriss is a co-founder of FotoFest® and has served as artistic director since 1991. As project director and senior curator for FotoFest®, she has developed over 60 international exhibits for FotoFest®, including path-breaking exhibits on Photography from China 1934-2008, AMERICAN VOICES -Latino photographers in the U.S., contemporary Mexican photography, the Global Environment, Photography from Latin America 1865-1994, photography from Central Europe, and Visual history of Kurdistan with Susan Meiselas, contemporary Korean photography, early 20th century Russian photography, multi-media/new technology installations, and the subject of Water.
In 1998, Wendy Watriss completed the award-winning book IMAGE AND MEMORY, Photography from Latin America 1866-1994 (University of Texas Press, 1998). From 1992-2008, Watriss has directed FotoFest® art programs and catalogue publications.
In 2002, she began supervising the programmatic and financial development of FotoFest’s Literacy Through Photography education program in schools and its integration with FotoFest’s art programs. From 1992-1997 and 2002-2008, she was responsible for administration of FotoFest®. From 1992-2005, she shared responsibility for FotoFest® finances with Frederick Baldwin.
From 1970-1991, Wendy Watriss worked as an award-winning international photojournalist and creative photographer, publishing work on subjects such as religious conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa, conflict in Salvador and Nicaragua, rebuilding of Skopje in Macedonia, Vietnam veterans and the herbicide Agent Orange, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. Her photographic work has been exhibited around the world and has won international awards from World Press Photo, Interpress Photo, Leica Inc. – the Oskar Barnack Award, and Mid America Arts/National Endowment for the Arts. In 1971, she began a photography and oral history project in Texas with Frederick Baldwin. The project received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Rockefeller Foundation, and Texas foundations. It resulted in numerous exhibitions and the book Coming To Terms, The German Hill Country of Texas (Texas A&M Press, 1991). From 1963-1966, Watriss worked as a writer and newspaper reporter on urban politics for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. From 1966-1970, she was a reporter and producer of political documentaries for public television in New York. She is a member of the American Leadership Forum and a recipient of Women on the Move award.
Design by
Osmosis Interactive based on Grid Focus.
© 2009 Singapore International Photography Festival. All Rights Reserved.