Time’s Ticking

August 25, 2017 / by Pierre Godeau

With all you’ve got going on, how did you find the time to write a book about time? 

Living in Beijing, it became apparent to me that most of the difficulties, obstacles and problems that we [non-Chinese] encounter with the Chinese came down to the relationship with time. Sometimes we find them too slow, while they feel that we go too fast – and sometimes it’s the other way round. We can’t seem to get the time right for one another! I learned to play around with what I call the agility of Chinese time.

Is this agile approach specifically Chinese? 

The Chinese have a rigorous, almost scientific, awareness of clock time. They also take liberties with time. I call this having a yin mode and a yang mode. In China, time isn’t slow or fast – it’s slow and fast. Time isn’t scientific or romantic – it’s both. This perception of time is something I found and continue to find very rewarding. 

Could that be related to the fact that the Chinese buy so many luxury watches nowadays?

Ever since the Jesuits came to China, the Chinese have been fascinated by the measurement of time. And it was in this way, with clocks, watches and the mechanics of time, that the Jesuits succeeded in winning over the imperial court. At the same time, the Chinese clearly sense the aesthetic aspect of time passing. It’s about the enjoyment of the moment and the measurement of continuity. 

What message are you trying to convey in your book and to whom is it addressed?

My message is for all those whose obsession with time has become a sickness – and I count myself among them. I’m not offering recipes or remedies with this book, but rather directions, notions and attitudes that will help us in our efforts to suffer less from this disease.

So there’s a therapy for this? 

Indeed there is. You have to know how to vary between different kinds of time. Meaning that if I’m a slave to one kind of time – speedy time – then I have to learn to slow down. If I’m someone who only feels comfortable going slow, I have to learn to accelerate. It’s like eating a balanced diet – you have to balance different kinds of time. There’s no such thing as time – what does exist is times, in the plural. So we have to be able to go from free time to constrained time, from a very demanding kind of time to time that’s a bit mad, a bit improvisational. We have to know how to shift from fast to slow, and from sensibility to logic. 

Is this easier to do in China? 

It’s much easier in China because the Chinese have this very natural ability to juggle these different kinds of time. They’re capable of being very quick to react, of being in digital time – WeChat time – and they’re also capable of sitting at the table for three hours and allowing time to flow when they’re in friendship time, relationship time, sharing time. I call this the ability to play around with different kinds of time. In business, in the way things get done, the Chinese have very fast response times and at the same time, they have a real sense of patience. 

Has this patience been somewhat forgotten in the West?

We’re insanely impatient. I’m truly convinced that patient people are the ones who build things, who create things, who win in negotiations. We should borrow this patience from Buddhism, Taoism and the Zen approach of the Chinese, because it’s also an acceptance of the imponderability of time. 

The Web We Weave

August 25, 2017 / by Anne Marie Law

Image above: Rooftop with Water, Berlin, 2015

A large space in a three-storey red-brick building, located in southeast Berlin near the river Spree, is home to nearly 100 spiders. Each of them comfortably rests in its own tiny framed cube – including some that live underwater in small tanks. They work hard as they weave their webs in various shapes and forms. But they’re not intended to catch bugs for food; rather, they’re to produce artworks that question the way humans live. 

Welcome to the “spider lab” inside the studio of Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno, who’s renowned for taking inspiration from spiders and their habitat in creating unique artworks. His works allow audiences to reflect on the environment and the possibility of finding a sustainable way of living in and beyond our planet, where scientists have recently warned that humans only have another 30 years to take effective action in saving ourselves from the “sixth mass extinction”. 

“We [humans] are small in relation to other species living on Planet Earth, but we are part of this cosmic web – something that is bigger than our planet,” says Saraceno during our meeting in his Berlin studio. “The idea of these complex spiderwebs helps us understand that we are part of this cosmic web.” That philosophy is at the heart of Saraceno’s art practices, which involve ongoing research that draws from the natural sciences, astrophysics and engineering. He describes himself as an artist who “lives and works in and beyond Planet Earth” in his biography – and he’s not exaggerating. 

Born in Argentina in 1973, Saraceno was trained in architecture before he became an artist. His knowledge in that area, compounded by his passion for the origins of the cosmos and the structure of space-time, has given birth to artworks that are one of a kind, in collaboration with some of the world’s most famous scientific institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Since 2008, Saraceno has been researching spiders and their behaviour in weaving their habitats in his “spider lab”. He was the first in the world to scan, reconstruct and reimagine spiderwebs, and owns a collection of the only three-dimensional renditions of these unique woven spatial habitats. 

This year, Saraceno has taken his work on spiderwebs further with a new large-scale work titled Cosmic Dust Installation, featured in his first solo exhibition in South Korea, Our Interplanetary Bodies, which is now showing at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju until March 25, 2018.

The artist says the work is a choreography of spiders’ dances on their webs, the movement of the dust and their interaction with humans. “It’s a music concert between the dust, the spiders and our breath,” he says, with audible excitement. 

The installation contains a large installation of spiderwebs produced by the Nephila genus, more commonly known as golden silk orb-weavers. According to Saraceno, these are “social spiders” – meaning they build new structures on top of existing webs, rather than destroying them. “It’s like me going to your house,” he explains. “This is built by different spiders with different degrees of social ability. They collaborate to build these webs.” 

Saraceno says that during the exhibition, the spider in her habitat and the sound of her movement is amplified through a microphone, which generates vibration of the dust. Audiences can listen to the sounds of the spider and admire the movement of the dust projected on a large wall. “You can hear a cosmic concert,” he says. 

Can humans actually learn how to live like spiders? Saraceno tried to answer this question with his Cloud Cities series, which is a concept of a modular city floating above the clouds. One of the works, On the Roof: Cloud City, was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; currently, the large-scale interactive installation In Orbit, a net structure containing five air-filled spheres suspended some 25 metres above the ground, allowing people to climb on them like spiders, is on long-term display at the K21 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Along the lines of Cloud Cities are his famous floating sculptures of the Aerocene project. Saraceno says that these sculptures are propelled by sunlight, which are prototypes for the way humans can travel in the future – without burning fossil fuels or any other forms of energy that damage the earth. Nine gigantic spherical sculptures have been brought to Asia for Our Interplanetary Bodies.

Pop ’Til You Drop

June 30, 2017 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Image above: Wall Explosion II (1965) by Roy Lichtenstein

“Pow!” “Whaam!” “Varoom!” In addition to the large onomatopoeic graphics on a background of explosive signage, Roy Lichtenstein is also recognised for his 1950s-style comic strip paintings, particularly those picturing the blonde woman and her polished man, who looks like he just stepped off the set of Mad Men.

The American artist commands astounding auction prices and remains highly influential, generally mentioned alongside Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Tom Wesselmann as the leading figures of the pop art movement. Born to an upper-middle-class Jewish family on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Lichtenstein skyrocketed to prominence in the early 1960s; in 1962, the entire collection from his first pop art solo exhibition at the famed Castelli Gallery sold out in one deal before the show had even started.

Lichtenstein’s instantly recognisable tongue-in-cheek parodies of comic strips and advertisement imagery, involving frequent use of stencils, makes a statement about the influence of American mass media and popular culture. His most famous works are clearly commercial in focus, drawing a major point of differentiation from the abstract expressionism that dominated the post-war period.

For the Love of Sweets 

June 30, 2017 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Could there be any better escape from the summer heat than a visit to an ice cream-themed museum? Following its 2016 launch in New York City, the Museum of Ice Cream opened in Los Angeles from April 22 until the end of May, enabling visitors to take photos with giant popsicle sculptures, enjoy sample scoops from artisanal California creameries such as McConnell’s and Coolhaus, and immerse themselves in a plastic sprinkle pool. 

The brainchild of 25-year-old Maryellis Bunn, the Museum of Ice Cream opened as a 45-day pop-up last summer in Manhattan; all 30,000 tickets were sold out in three days, leaving 200,000 people on the sweet-tooth waiting list. The LA pop-up followed a similar course, with tickets selling out after just a couple of days, as celebrities including Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian brought their children to the highly Instagrammable show.

Dream of Dimensions

June 30, 2017 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

image above: Bridge, Flatland II

Rising Star

March 31, 2017 / by Marine Orlova

Above image: the white swan on stage

Was it your dream of a lifetime to become a principal dancer?

Indeed! I started dancing when I was four years old. At 11, I took part in a competition with my favourite dancer, José Martinez, as a member of the jury – I even had a poster of him in my bedroom at the time. I received the gold medal and since that day I dreamt of becoming a danseuse étoile [principal dancer] so that I could dance with him. 

The world of dance is known as an extremely tough environment. Is it? 

Well, when you’re so committed to ballet, you don’t have the same adolescence as others – I wasn’t a party girl. But it wasn’t a sacrifice; it was my choice. As for the cliché about the bad atmosphere at dance school, think of this: what happens when dozens of young girls are gathered in the same room? At that age, whether you dance or not, you’re not the sweetest creature on earth. 

Let’s talk about the big day – how did you feel when Aurélie Dupont [the Paris Opera’s new dance director] and Stéphane Lissner [the Paris Opera’s director] made the announcement?

It was crazy! Of course, there were favourable circumstances, as it was the first time I danced Odile/Odette in Swan Lake, a leading role with Germain Louvet [who was appointed principal dancer a few days before Baulac] on New Year’s Eve. But I was actually 100% focused on my interpretation in order to do the best possible show – and not thinking about a promotion. It’s not good to dance while thinking, “If I don’t dance well tonight, I won’t be promoted.” One, you never know what will happen and two, you prefer to think it won’t happen anyway in order to keep the stress away. 

So when I saw them climbing on stage at the end of the ballet, I thought, “Okay, they’re here for me. Enjoy it, this is your moment – it only happens once in a lifetime.” You know, it’s very strange to be alone in front of 3,000 people – I bowed at least 12 times! In the past, whenever I looked at my watch and it was 11:11 or 22:22, I used to wish I would become a danseuse étoile. Now that it’s done, I wish for peace in the world! [laughs]

What repertoire would you like to explore in the next few years? 

I love to tell stories, to play characters and to move my audience to a different universe. I would love to dance in Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring. It must be a very different experience. The first time I saw it, I had an aesthetic shock. The dancers are barefoot, wild and covered with dust – the audience can even hear them breathing. This ballet gives a very special collective effect that I’d love to experience. As for the more classical repertoire, I love dramatic love stories. I really enjoyed dancing Juliet in Romeo and Juliet; the costumes were amazing. I would also like to dance in Onegin, Manon and Giselle. There’s this amazing scene in Giselle when she turns mad; I’m sure it’s a real thrill to dance. 

What changes when you become a soloist? 

A few years ago, when I was working on The Nutcracker with Germain Louvet, and it was my first great role, I remember that Aurélie Dupond prophetically told us, “You two will be soloists one day, I’m sure. You should prepare yourselves. Whether you want it or not, it will come and it’s not an easy thing to deal with.” 

And she was right – being a soloist is very challenging. When people come to see an étoile, they expect something extraordinary and you have to give it to them, even if you’re having a bad day. There’s nobody you can hide behind. And there are a lot of things you have to think about as a soloist. I remember one night I danced Clara in The Nutcracker and the neck of the doll was broken. So I spent half of the ballet keeping the head on the bust in order to maintain that fairytale mood and not let it turn into a horror show. These are the kinds of things one cannot imagine from the outside. 

From the pirouette to the arabesque, you’ve mastered all the ballet steps. If you were one of them, which one would you be?

A jump! 

One needs energy to jump – where do you get yours from? 

Music. It has always made me dance. When I was a little girl, I used to dance in the living room, listening to my favourite tunes for hours: Brahms’ Hungarian Dances and Chopin’s Nocturnes. Today, my favourite ballets are those whose music inspires me the most, like The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky – and Pina Bausch’s choreography really reflects what I hear in this music. I also like to listen to jazz, Charleston and swing. 

Tell us your ballerina secrets – what’s your feel-good ritual backstage?

I love massages. It’s a professional care that I indulge myself with. 

What would we see in your private dressing room? 

A lot of snacks: cereal bars and almonds everywhere! We don’t always have the time to eat a proper lunch, so it’s very important to keep energy sources at hand. I pay a lot of attention to what I eat. Not to restrain myself, as many people think dancers do, but on the contrary – to eat enough of everything. Diets without protein, carbohydrates or fat are a catastrophe when you have to dance eight hours a day. I would like to tell young dancers that if they want to have a long and beautiful career, they need to eat well – otherwise they run the risk of injuries. Anorexia is a real plague in the world of dance and it’s such a pity to see young dancers broken because of it.

A dancer’s way of moving is truly fascinating for non-dancers. How do you define this elegance?

On stage, elegance is the art of finding the right balance between expressivity and technique. It’s quite the same in everyday life – elegance is a matter of balance. I think the most important thing is to be beautiful for oneself; as soon as one overplays something, it’s doomed to fail. And I’d say politeness is also part of being elegant. 

Any expert tips to look like a dancer when walking down the street? 

Just the basics: keep your back straight, relax your shoulders and stretch your neck.

Before we let you get back to the Garnier, which ballet would you advise us to see?

If you come to Paris next year, don’t miss Don Quichotte. It’s a very pleasant and lively ballet – and not at all elitist. 

Eau Naturel

Above image: “Water Shrine”International Terminal at Haneda Airport, Tokyo, Japan

March 31, 2017 / by Joel Fischer

Why do you have such a fascination with waterfalls?

When I look at waterfalls, I see amazing, impossible scenery. The constant movement of the water attracts not only human beings, but also any animals that are nearby. I’m interested in the reaction between the water and gravity, and when I paint I pour the pigments from the top of the panels and create a waterfall on the surface of the paper. 

Nature seems to play such a dominant role in your art…

Since the ice age, the primitive era, humans have always tried to capture nature and to communicate with nature. So when you look at cave paintings there are bison or deer painted on the walls of a cave and that shows the curiosity of ice-age people – where did this animal come from and where is it going? 

Looking back at the history of art and particularly depictions of nature, who do you most admire and what most influenced you?

I’d probably start 50,000 years ago when the first human made art – painted the animal on the wall, in a cave. And I love Renoir, Monet, Hokusai, Hiroshige… the Italian Renaissance, too. In American art, Gerhard Richter. American contemporary artists successfully expressed things that you cannot see. Abstract painting has successfully given a form to something that is invisible. 

You’ve said you’re not a Japanese artist or an Asian artist. Can you explain how you position yourself in a world context? 

In the present day, there is so much separation or alienation by race, whether it’s Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, American or European. I think it’s very important now to talk as a human being, as a common denominator. 

Tell us about the museum dedicated to your work in Karuizawa. 

The architect was Ryue Nishizawa. It’s constructed mainly with glass and is in the forest – so in a way, it’s invisible. There is no artificial light. It’s almost like you’re walking in nature and you happen to come across my paintings. 

And your New York studio is in an old power station?

I used to have a big studio in Tribeca in downtown Manhattan. But my paintings got bigger and bigger, and I could no longer carry them out through the elevator. My wife looked for a new location and found an old power plant in Westchester that I renovated. [The purpose of] a power plant is to generate electricity and bring light to people, so that place is an inspiration to me. 

You’re currently working on your Cliff series – 18 new pieces that will debut at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York in November, and which will possibly be brought to Hong Kong next year. Can you describe your creative process for those works?

[Senju holds up a piece of paper and scrunches it up to demonstrate.]
I crunch up huge pieces of paper so they are damaged – but looking carefully at them, I can see cliffs. I pour pigment on top of those crushed papers and it falls because of gravity. It’s collaboration with a natural phenomenon. In art history, I don’t think anybody has used pigment on top of crushed paper. The reason I can do it is because I use Japanese mulberry paper, which is very strong. 

Au Naturel

February 3, 2017 / by Emily Zhang

In today’s art world, the use of materials is only limited by the imagination. Chicago-based artist Vicki Rawlins makes eye-catching artworks using items straight from Mother Nature and sells them on Sister Golden, an online boutique she runs with her daughter, Brooke. “I had seen some foliage art on Instagram and thought it would be fun,” explains Rawlins. “I have been an artist my whole life and portrait work has been a love of mine, so doing foliage faces was what I wanted to try.”

Rawlins worked on showcase homes and for commercial businesses for many years before getting back into her studio with paint and flowers. Her goal is to create artwork that is colourful and fresh, and will help define people’s spaces. To achieve this, Rawlins spends a lot of time foraging in her neighbourhood, collecting natural materials. Then she assembles portraits in her studio with what she finds outdoors, turning a fallen leaf into an eyebrow, rose petals into a perfect pair of lips and twigs into a face. “I make up the women I’m doing out of my imagination,” explains Rawlins. “I really try to create a feeling or story around each one. Most of the time, the flowers I have to work with will take me into a certain direction. Frida Kahlo is my muse – and a subject I just feel like I need to do.”

Most strikingly, the materials are delicately balanced on each other – so she has to be extremely careful with the creation, as no glue, tape or other adhesives are used to stick the foliage to her work. The pieces take Rawlins anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days, and the final step is to document her art; the resulting prints are sold on Sister Golden. “After I finish the piece, I document it with a photograph, being very careful not to bump the table and Mother Nature’s house of cards,” explains Rawlins, who professes the whole act is therapeutic. “When I’m finished with a piece, I gather up all the flowers and put them in my compost pile or send them off into the lake my studio is on.”

The Art of Going Global

December 9, 2016 / by Chris Campbell

If you want to be a successful art dealer in 2016, forget sitting in your gallery waiting for customersto come in – and instead embrace a global, connected strategy. That’s the key message from entrepreneur Sundaram Tagore, whose galleries in New York, Singapore and Hong Kong showcase contemporary art from around the world.

For Tagore, a global strategy means following art fairs from continent to continent, riding the rising wave of online sales, offering an increasingly eclectic range of international art and artists, staging pop-up exhibitions in major capitals and turning the traditional gallery visit into a lifestyle experience. With the critical art fair season going into full swing, he’s about to embark on a frenetic travel schedule that will take him to Miami, Singapore, Palm Beach, New York, Dubai and finally Hong Kong for the 2017 Art Basel fair, to be held from March 23 to 25.

New York has been home for Tagore since he completed his art studies and joined the bohemian art scene in the city’s Soho district of the 1980s, befriending leading post-war art figures including Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. Tagore opened his first Soho gallery in 2000 – Rauschenberg threw a party to celebrate – and he already looks back on it as a distant era. “The art world back then was located in a physical space,” he recalls. “If you had an art gallery, as a gallerist you sat in the gallery and waited for a client to come in.” 

So how has the art market changed? “As the world has flattened – especially in the context of how the art market functions – people from New York travel to Hong Kong during auction and art fair season, and vice versa. Mainland Chinese collectors will end up in Miami and at European art fairs,” explains Tagore. “The easiest way to consume art is through art fairs or online, so the old school brick-and-mortar type of gallery can’t be your only point of access. The internet has become a very important dissemination and consumption channel. You have to have an understanding of how people view and buy art, which these days includes phones and tablets.” 

It’s a view backed up by the numbers. Art sales totalled US$63.8 billion globally in 2015, down 7 per cent from 2014, according to a report published earlier this year by The European Fine Art Foundation. However, online sales bucked the trend and rose by 7 per cent,
reaching almost US$5 billion.

Technology is also set to impact how people view and buy art. “If we mount an exhibition in New York, thanks to virtual reality a collector will be able to walk through the gallery anywhere else in the world,” says Tagore. “It will allow collectors to make a much better judgment in buying a particular piece because they will be able to ‘walk’ around it and look at it from all angles.” 

Tagore also says the old days of monocultural offerings are over. “You are no longer showing artists from just one country – but from 18, 20, 30 different countries if you are a big enough gallery.” He also believes that galleries today must offer a full lifestyle experience, including conferences, lectures, visits to working artists’ studios and art tours to different parts of the world. “Galleries must take on a multifaceted role – as the bricks-and-mortar role changes and dissolves, they must take up a new position.” 

Increasing globalisation has also revealed marked differences in how artists work. “A lot of artists in the West, for instance, are very interested in producing paintings. But in Asia and some of the emerging markets, or with developing artists, they tend to produce installations and other forms of art that require manufacturing,” he says. “Collectors’ tastes have evolved – we get a new set of eyes every 20 years – and art has lost its definition as something you put on the wall.”

It Just Clicks

October 28, 2016 / by China Daily

You initially studied filmmaking in university, but ultimately became a photographer. Did anyone nurture or shape your photographic talent at the start of your career? 

I think my professors were influential in my career. They sort of set me on the course.

Where did you get your first camera? What did you shoot?

It was a birthday gift – a Kodak Brownie. I was shooting stuff like my travels, friends and family. 

You quit your job at the age of 27 and became a freelance photographer. What was it like to be a photographer in the 1970s?

It was great. I was striking out on my own, doing my own thing and not having to do assignments – I was just free. But it was very competitive.

You created many celebrated works and had a lot of inspiration in Asia. When you first came to this part of the world, what do you recall about your first impressions? 

It was in India – I remember there were a lot of people on the street, and there was kind of pungent odour of curry or something. It was very crowded and a bit of shock. It was a new experience, a new world and a new adventure.

How about your experiences in China? 

The first time I went there, I was going to shoot a monsoon. I went back again four years later to do a story on Shanghai for Life magazine, I think in 1989. Now, it’s like no other place in the world – it has just exploded. Most people rode their bicycles then; there weren’t so many cars. Everything was very simple. But it changed so fast. The change was so unbelievable and astonishing. It has transformed overnight. It’s just amazing – and maybe it’s just the beginning. I wish I had worked more there, because it was so fascinating. It’s so different from the way it is now.

Travel plays a very important part in your life. You’ve been to many places and have taken countless calculated risks. But unexpected situations do arise – all the time. Have you ever been especially nervous about any of your trips?

Mostly in places like Afghanistan… some parts of India and Iraq. But the main one I always worried about was Afghanistan. Every day there were some problems – security problems. People were being kidnapped, killed. It was a constant worry. 

Have you ever considered going back?

I was there in March. I’m doing a book about Afghanistan: culture, landscapes, portraits – my impressions of Afghanistan. So I might go back there and add some more pictures.

I heard that in Kuwait, you almost lost your life. 

Actually, I think the time I was most scared was in Slovenia. I was doing aerial photography in a plane and the pilot crashed into the lake – he made a mistake and flew the plane too close to the water. I survived, but it was scary being upside down, underwater. I was pretty lucky. 

Where do you most want to travel these days?

I want to go to China again – it hangs on my list of places I’d like to travel. I also want to travel around the US, because I haven’t done as much of that. Those are two things on my list. There are a lot of interesting places in China. But it changes a lot – a lot of charm is going to be lost. The architecture used to be very unique, but they tear the buildings down and put up something new, usually not that great-looking. But this happens everywhere else – New York is the same. Practically nothing is left the way it was 100 years ago.

What’s your typical kit these days?

I use a 24-70 f2.8 – that’s my main lens. When I wander down the street, I just have the camera and bag I’m travelling with. When I’m working, I just have the camera – no extra lenses. I like to keep it very minimal. But I have other cameras; I have my digital Hasselblad and my phone. 

Do you take a lot of photos with your mobile phone?

Yes, all the time. Sometimes, if the quality is okay, I publish them. But they’re not big – just eight-by-tens or something. 

What subjects interest you? How do you make them comfortable?

You decide the subjects based on how you respond to people. Some of them have interesting faces. You have to recognise something that’s really special. I use a bit of humour to help them defuse the awkwardness and self-consciousness. I think humour can be a great ally in a photo shoot. 

What if people say no when you want to take their photo? 

That happens. If they say no, you just move on. You only have a 90% success rate, if you’re lucky. 

To get a great picture, sometimes you have to wait a long time. How do you know that perfect moment? 

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on a lot of factors. It’s about experience and you have to wait to find the right moment. You improve yourself as you practice – practice is everything. 

What’s the worst part about your job?

Airport security isn’t fun – the whole airport experience isn’t fun. It’s the worst aspect of travel. 

The world is undergoing tremendous changes now. What impressed people in the past might become passé today. Do you worry that people might get bored of Steve McCurry’s way of interpreting the world?

No – I think I have a good sense of observation. I’m curious. I know a good picture when I see one. If I find something extraordinary, other people will feel the same way. I’m not too concerned about fashion and style.

When I joined the media tour of your Asia Society exhibition and we were introduced to your photo Golden Rock, the guide made a remark about the “reality of the photograph”. Some people argue that there’s no such thing as reality in photography. What do you think?

I think if you’re shooting for newspaper or something, then there are certain rules. If you’re making art, it’s a different thing. It depends on what you’re doing.