People Space: Mind's Eye: Collection of Hand-Coloured Black and White Photographs

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Mind's Eye: Collection of Hand-Coloured Black and White Photographs

On view from 17 May – 21 June 2008

Opening Party : 17 May 2008 (8 pm onwards)
- Hand-Coloured Photographs Slide Presentation with Khim Performance from Erin Songdechagraiwud
- Artist’s Talk : Pinyo Trisuriyatamma will talk with our artist - Chaipong Kittinaradorn - about the history and concepts of hand-colouring photography.

Venue : People Space 116 Phrang Phuthon Road, San Chaopho Suea, Phranakorn, Bangkok, Thailand 10200 Tel : 0815491002 E-mail : people.space@yahoo.com
http://www.people-space.blogspot.com/

Open Hours : Only on Saturday and Sunday (11 am – 7 pm)
Press : By Appointment (if besides Saturday and Sunday)

Events & Activities :

Sunday 25 May 2008 (1.30 pm onwards)
Hand-Colouring Photography Demonstration and Shooting Day
- Our artist will demonstrate how to create hand-coloured photographs.
- For those who are interested in doing hand-coloured photographs by themselves or would like our artist to do one for them, members from B&W Rhapsodies Group will photograph all the participants in black and white. All have to return on the next Sunday for their own hand-coloured photographs.
- Free admission fee for the demonstration.

Sunday 1 June 2008 (1.30 pm onwards)
Hand-Coloured Photographs Workshop
- Those who were photographed on the previous Sunday return to do their own versions of hand-coloured photographs or let our artist create ones for them.
- Fee: 500 Baht per a 8”´10” photo (all equipments included)

Sunday 15 June 2008 (1.30 pm onwards)
Hand-Colouring Photography Course
- This course is designed for those who really want to know hand-colouring photography in depth. Our artist will give a full lecture as well as run a workshop so you know from start till end how hand-coloured photographs are made. (Our artist will prepare samples of black and white photos for the participants to practice their skill.)
- Fee:500 Baht per person (all equipments included)

Closing Date : 21 June 2008

-- Full volumn of Chaipong Kiitnaradorn’s Mind’s Eye : Collections of Hand-Coloured Black and White Photographs published by openbooks will be available at the gallery along with the exhibition--

“I have never denied that the world is full of colours.
However, as one who adores old-fashioned photography
and feels averse to the unnatural touch of photographic paper

printed from colour negatives or colour slides,
I love to paint colours on black and white photographs by hand.

Many kinds of media and colours are applied to deliver
my imaginary vision - sometimes faithfully imitated from reality,

sometimes deliberately distorted…”

Chaipong Kittinaradorn

........................................................................

In the modern world where everything seems to move rapidly, leisure pursuit hobbies that once used to make people happy are likely unable to make them happy quick enough. We tend to spend our time in front of televisions which offer us all kinds of entertainment second by second just by pressing buttons on our remote controllers.

Everyday we are in a rush and attach our lives to technology that supposes to help us save time, unrealising that the time saved is being wasted in vain.
Technology that we hope to make our lives easier, for many times, turns to be our complication.
Thus, deep down, we long for simplicity that we once had or dreamt to have.

Chaipong Kittinaradorn is the one who profoundly perceives this truth.

In the time when photography becomes digitalised with highly-developed gadgets and techniques, Chaipong and his friends of all ages have gathered and called themselves “Black and White Rhapsodies Group”. In the group’s website http://www.bwfoto.net/, the phrase “no digital cameras here” is stated clearly. Members of the group prefer the old-fashioned photography which photographers have to control every step of creation from shooting, developing and printing.

In Chaipong’s belief, Black & White colour is the most fundamental kind of truth. Still, at present, black-and-white photography has become a kind of hobbies for specific groups. Wide-spread use of digital cameras partly makes black-and-white photography too complex. Shooting in digital files, on the contrary, is easy to develop and use. The process of photographic creation that one has to control every step by himself appears to be far too complicated.

However, once, black-and-white photography connoted simplicity. In case one wanted photos to have realistic colours as his eyes saw, the maker only needed to paint colours onto black-and-white photo surface. This simple and delicate method together blended art and craft harmoniously.

This has laid the foundation of Hand-Colouring Photography.

Although the existence of colour negatives has deluded the practice of hand-coloured photography, nowadays, there are many photographers who are fascinated by this crafty work and reuse this technique. The working process remains the same; the purpose, nevertheless, alters greatly. Hand-colouring is no longer for imitating nature but for rendering freedom of imagination. It is the intimate relationship of body and mind. Thoughts and feels shape the creator’s character through various colours painted deliberately. If we see a camera as a man, photographs are things that the man sees through the eye in his mind.

Mind’s Eye will display series of hand-coloured photographs by Chaipong Kittinaradorn – a photographer who is happy with this slow-pace artistic creation.

People Space truly believes that besides pleasure the viewer will get, seeing the world through the eyes of others will help open up your mind and make you see things from different perspectives.

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Sarinee Achavanuntakul + Angkrit Ajchariyasophon

Sarinee Achavanuntakul

A financier by training, Sarinee Achavanuntakul is currently a writer and independent academic who tries to regularly publicize new developments in social enterprises and "humane capitalism" via her personal blog at http://www.fringer.org and various publications including http://www.onopen.com and Prachachat Turakij newspaper. She also teaches an undergraduate course called "Business and Society" every year as adjunct professor at Thammasat University's Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy.

As independent academic, Sarinee has written a number of academic papers covering issues in the Thai capital markets, including "Capital Allocation in Thai Economy under Globalization" (with professor Kittichai Sae-lee) for Thammasat University, and "The Use of Nominees in the Stock Exchange of Thailand" for Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI). Sarinee's final position in her former career as investment banker was Executive Director at Hunters Advisory, a boutique local financial advisory firm. Prior to that role, between 2003 and 2006, she worked in Corporate Finance and Corporate Strategy departments at SCB Securities Co. Ltd., a local investment bank. Prior to joining SCB Securities, she worked as investment banker in Financial Institutions Group, Deutsche Bank AG Hong Kong Branch.

She holds an MBA in finance from Leonard Stern School of Business at New York University, and a BA in economics from Harvard University.

Angkrit Ajchariyasophon

Angkrit Ajchariyasophon is a visual artist. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Chiang Mai University. After graduation, he decided to go to Europe and stay there for six months in the hopes that he would be modernized and westernized. However, it did not work out as he planned (he thought that it must be because of his yellow skin).

Disappointed, he headed back to his hometown. Nonetheless, he remained excited to see foreigners do yoga or meditation; subsequently, he made an effort once more to become a perfect English gentleman.

He now lives in Chiang Rai and owns a Chinese restaurant. He still studies English from fairy tales he reads his son, wishing that one day he would eventually become a true Westerner in both body and soul, so that he could become and ordained Western monk who practices yoga and meditation full-time in the last years of his life.

Chananun Chotrungroj

Supachai Ketkaroonkul

Chaipong Kittinaradorn

Chaipong Kittinaradorn graduated from the Faculty of Law, Thammasat University. He began his career at the International Red Cross and later switched to private businesses. He is now operating an apartment business in Bangkok.

Despite changes in his professions, photography remains his steady “amateur” work. Starting with colour negatives, he later moved to slide film and eventually was drawn to black and white photography. To fulfil his imaginary vision, he started to add colours onto black and white photographs. Now he is heading the budding hand-coloured black and white photography movement in Thailand.

Chaipong also taught photography at Sripatum University and exhibited hand-coloured black and white photographs at Viengtavern Gallery in Bangkok as well as many universities in the south of Thailand. He co-founded Black and White Rhapsodies Group (www.bwfoto.net) and recently photographed for Integral Buddha: The Life of Buddhasa Bhikku written by Suvinai Pornavalai which tells a story of Buddhasa Bhikku – a highly revered Buddhist monk whose zen-like teaching is admired and followed by wide audience.

His wife, Kasama, is a Thai medical doctor and handicraft exporter. His elder son, Chitpong, is a technology-oriented social developer working with the Thai Rural Net Insititute (TRN) and Thai Health Promotion Foundation. Rakpong, the youngest son, is an International Astronomy Olympiad winner and is now studying physics at Mahidol University in Bangkok. The family members meet up every week to share their stories, lives and passion.

Contact the artist at: chaipong.k@gmail.com

Wisut Ponnimit

Wisut Ponnimit is a "manga artist," a label so unusual and unique in Thailand that it has made him one of the most extraordinary icons of his generation. hesheit, the title of the manga series that brought attention to Wisutwas published monthly in a day magazine for over 5 years. Some have called his manga "arty" and "philosophical" because of its often radical and profound contents.

Wisut went to Japan in 2003 in order to learn more about manga in the environment where manga was created. His works caught the attention of the Japanese audience in less than three months and within about one year Wisut, at the age of 28, became the first Thai manga artist ever to have his work published and distributed in Japan by a Japanese publisher. The book is called Everybodyeverything, a collection of short comics originally published in Thai publications. Everybodyeverything is also published in Thailand by Typhoon Books. Since then he has been a regular Typhoon Books writer.

Banana Yoshitomo, the internationally acclaimed Japanese author said this about Wisut’s work: "I think (Wisut’s) beautiful spiritscan offer warmth to the exhausted minds of Japan."

He is working on more books, animations, and installations. His big goal is to make a feature length anime.

Visit: http://web.mac.com/wisut/wisut/main.html
Check out Wisut-designed products: http://www.tamaribathai.com/

Many thanks to Typhoon for the biography :-)