travling photography

I have now completed producing 'The Legend of Hua', an audio slideshow (aka photo film) which recounts in just over 3:30 seconds (reportedly today's upper limit for our attention span) the story of Hua. The story   meshes the topic of ghosts, opium, Shanghai in its 1930's heyday, traditional Chinese cultural and supernatural elements; all revolving around a plot of betrayal. The plot is influenced by a 1988 movie by Stanley Kwan (in turn based on a novel by Li Pi-Hua (also known as Lillian Lee), one of the most influential Chinese TV writers, film writers and reporters. I've recently produced a handful of audio slideshows that involve imaginary plots during the 1930s in Shanghai, featuring friends who take on the roles of wronged women...possibly wronged by either Chinese men or laowais/gweilos .  My long-time readers know that I've embarked on a  chinoiserie "phase" for quite a while now; a phase fueled  by my travels over the past few years to Hanoi...

I've been absent from this blog for a while due to 'busy-ness', and working on a new audio-slideshow (aka photo-film) titled "The Legend of Hua"...which turned out to be more time-consuming than I anticipated, due to the various audio tracks that had to mesh with still photographs. In the meantime, I uploaded a sample of the still images from the soon-to-be released audio slideshow unto my Exposure website, however I chose to post process these differently from those in the slideshow.  I had read that a photographic technique merging silver printing with charcoal painting was widely popular in the 1920-1930s Shanghai, so I explored various modern digital post processing ways to try and imitate that 'look' as closely as I knew how. After a number of failed attempts, I chose a process which mixes a combination of my own settings using two imaging softwares; ON1 Photo Raw 2018 and Iridient Developer 4. When I was satisfied with the resultant 'look', I...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved I'm currently working on a rather intricate "photo film" or audio slideshow that will mesh the topic of ghosts, opium, Shanghai in its 1930's heyday,  traditional Chinese cultural and supernatural elements; all revolving around  a plot of betrayal. The plot itself is influenced by a 1988 movie by Stanley Kwan (in turn based on a novel by  Li Pi-Hua (also known as Lillian Lee), one of the most influential Chinese TV writers, film writers and reporters.  It's funny how one thing leads to another...while planning my fortnight in Shanghai and preparing for my lecture and street photography workshop some six or seven weeks ago, I was invited to a number of WeChat groups by Yi Yi; a previous acquaintance from that super-modern city who would work with me on the second iteration of The Girl of Nanjing Road .  Through these WeChat groups, I connected with Ren Li Fung ("Betty") who seemed very popular as a qi pao mode...

N anjing Road by Tewfic El-Sawy on Exposure I completed another personal project whilst in Shanghai a couple of weeks ago. It's a sequel to The Girl of Nanjing Road (Part 1) which featured Yi Yi as the main (and only visible protagonist). Both involve Yi Yi as a girl from Shanghai who's in a relationship with a foreign resident of that city during its glorious heydays of the 1930s, and into the start of the battle of Shanghai in 1937. For historical buffs; the Battle of Shanghai was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. During the fierce three-month battle, Chinese and Japanese troops fought in downtown Shanghai. In the end, the city fell, and China lost a significant portion of its best troops, while also failing to elicit any international intervention. Against this warring background, the Shanghai French Concession was a...

scroll image down Taking advantage of being in Shanghai to give a 3-hour photo talk on travel photography at the well-known IG (Imaging Group) Photography Gallery, followed by a day long street photography workshop for 10 local photographers (and a subsequent photo critique), I was able to indulge in some street photography of my own...either alone or with a Chinese friend. I naturally gravitated to the neighborhoods that still had the traditional narrow alleys where the less fortunate Shanghainese families still lived...a world apart from the shiny new areas where the  ?? ( xiaozi � 'little capitalists') lived, worked and shopped. By the way, modern Shanghai is lightyears ahead of New York City in terms of infrastructure, cleanliness, transportation and overall efficiency...and its subway system is as good as Tokyo's. Shanghai's Vanishing Longtang Alleys . The narrow and tightly-packed alleys that escaped demolition in some Shanghai neighborhoods are called  l...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved On an overcast day during my two weeks stay in Shanghai, I traveled to the ancient water town of Jinxi with a Chinese photographer, his wife and a translator. The town is about an hour's drive, and is known for being -as yet- untarnished by commercialism. Jinxi is also known as Chenmu, or the tomb of Chen. She was a beautiful royal concubine of Emperor Xiaozong(1127-1194)of the Song Dynasty. The legend is that during their stay in Jinxi, she decided to stay a little longer, and died there because of a sudden illness. However, this is not about Jinxi, but about a small nondescript small town a few miles away called Shi Hu Dang, where I was introduced to a delightful octogenarian by Mei Qi; a businesswoman and his student at the school where he had worked for decades.  I was welcomed by Mr. Wu into his small house; neat but cluttered at the same time. Unfortunately, his wife was absent doing errands so I could not meet her, alth...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved Spending a couple of weeks documenting the Chinese (Hokkien) Opera troupes during the Nine Emperor Gods festivals in Kuala Lumpur gave me the opportunity to continue my "Red Qi Pao" project which involves photo shoots in atmospheric interiors that are reminiscent of a 1930 Shanghai. This time, I chose to shoot in a studio setting (a first for me). Along with Stanley Hong, a friend and photographer, we drove from mid town Kuala Lumpur to 512 Studio, Jalan SS 7/26, in Petaling Jaya...a journey that took us about half an hour or so. The studio is owned by Ms Osa Lim, and managed by the ebullient Ms Shay Yap, herself a photographer as well. The small studio is reasonably well appointed, with 4 or 5 separate areas that are decorated in different styles; such as a dark bar with wine glasses, a red room with old Shanghai posters, another in a Japanese style, etc. We were to met Lee Lee; a lovely friend who volunteered to model for us. She...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved I've immersed myself (not totally...but let's say, up to my waist) in documenting Chinese Opera in its various forms since mid 2017, but have found the project to be daunting because of the complexity of that ancient art form, its diverse types/styles, because of its thousands of tales and because I don't speak or understand Mandarin and/or Cantonese. Notwithstanding these challenges, I started to read on the various types of Chinese opera, and during 2017 attended and photographed various performances in New York City's Chinatown (Cantonese), in Kuala Lumpur (Hokkien) and in Shanghai (Qinqiang). It is a Qinqiang performance in Shanghai that's the subject of this Beyond The Frame blog post. The premier venue for Chinese opera in Shanghai is the Yi Fu Theater on Fu Zhou Lu Road near People's Park. It was known as the largest theater in the Far East, and no opera actor or actress could achieve fame until they performed ...

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy | All Rights Reserved Having recently visited this blog's archives, I remembered it had a periodic feature called "Beyond The Frame" in which I chose a single image and wrote about its back story.  As it was quite popular with readers, I decided to re-introduce Beyond The Frame as an irregular feature on The Travel Photographer blog. Readers will recall from my many posts on The Red Qi Pao that I've produced two multimedia essays about an imaginary love story involving  a Shanghainese young woman and a foreigner in the 1930s at a time when Shanghai was a "wicked" city. Taking the opportunity of being in Shanghai in September, I was fortunate to be introduced to Yi Yi (a pseudonym); a professional model and a budding photographer herself, and featured her as the red qi pao -clad girl of Nanjing Road; a famous road in the city. Along with Eric, a photographer friend, we went to Guilin Park for a 3 hours photo shoot. The park's tea h...