Seen: 満ち来る潮 Ⅱ / Tide Rises Ⅱ
Who: 宛超凡 / Wan Chaofan / artist website
Where: Totem Pole Photo Gallery, Shinjuku
When: 9.5(tue) - 9.17(sun), 2017 (open 12-7, closed Mondays)
This is Wan’s third exhibition at Totem Pole since becoming a member in 2017. I unfortunately missed the first volume of Tide Rises, but there’s a familiarity in presence and distance with his earlier series By The Water. Part of this is due to materials- Tri-X & HP-5 exposed through either a Leica M4 or a Rollei 35, printed on fiber paper in a darkroom- and partly due to place- Wan’s native China appears in Tide Rises alongside images from Japan.
It’s the distance that’s most striking to me- even in relatively close-up subjects the images are isolated by focus or framing. There’s a gradual brightening-up in his sequencing. It’s similar to a tired old black and white television set turned on one more time.