Behind the images: photography in Lost in Shanghai, Part 1
A series on the stories behind the images
As the national tour of Lost in Shanghai is only a few weeks away, I thought I’d reveal some of the stories behind the images.
I became an avid photographer when I was sixteen after my Dad’s chief snapper gave me my first 35 mm camera. It was an Olympus Trip and it started my love affair with Olympus cameras. By the time I was eighteen I had graduated to an OM-10 which was my camera of choice for two decades plus. For some progressive reason we were taught to develop photos in my final years of high school and so, with the help of my older brother, we set up a darkroom at home and that’s where I spent most weekends, developing my (mostly) terrible black and white images.
This is Chan Kiu, the celebrated Hong Kong news photographer who gave me my first camera.
He was a quiet, focused man. I now know he was also an extraordinary talent capturing images of Hong Kong during unprecedented moments over more than three decades. In later years when I became a reporter, I would see him out and about now and then.
Teenage Jane was astounded by Chan Kiu’s gift and I began to photograph everything around me; my parents, brothers, friends, especially our beloved dog Huck. This one (which is in the upcoming show) is from a series called ‘Moody Jane and Huck’.
I’d balance the camera on the floor, put the timer on and… well, they weren’t brilliant, but they certainly captured my awkward teenagerness after my brothers had left and gone to boarding school and I found myself as an only child at home in Hong Kong.
This streetscape brings back warm memories of going shopping with my Mum as a little girl.
In my first year at university I submitted a photo assignment called ‘Home’. An image from this assignment became the unofficial cover shot for Lost in Shanghai. It’s called ‘self-portrait’.
Curiously, Self Portrait didn’t make the final selection of the hundreds of images we used in the show. But it’s one of my favourites. It’s so, optimistic! I hope you enjoyed Part One of stories behind the images of Lost in Shanghai. Do you have a stash of great photos hiding in plain sight? Do tell.
Thanks for joining me.
Hi Jane.
Nice black and white images! . I miss B and W processing at home in our dark room during the early seventies. Just watching the image appear on plane paper was always exciting.
Our every day vision is in colour. So B and W makes an image standout in a bold and viivid way.
Colour is such a big thing these days and cannot imagine going back to the old format. Always enjoyable seeing B and W images in art galleries Not sure you can buy BandW film.
Of course you can convert a colour imagine to BandW but it doesn’t have the contrast a pure BandW film can create
May your photography continue to inspire you.
Rob
I have inherited the family black and white photo albums. There are pencilled in names so that I could connect the relatives that I did not meet ‘in person’ with anecdotes of their lives from Mum’s memory.
There are black and white settings in Scotland, Ireland, England and India that I too have questions about.
We set up a dark room twice. Firstly, for my brother in our weatherboard home in Victoria. My daughter benefitted from my brother’s re-use principles and developed Black and white films with photo paper, development trays and an enlarger which he gave to us.
Our conversations today have been about our first cameras and their evolution. A welcome memory test for us.