Encounter#40B 2018
In Chinese Folk Culture, the 7th month in the Lunar Calendar is known as the “Hungry Ghost Month”. It is believed that during this period, the gates of hell are opened. A period when humans and spirits walk as one on earth. What was once dead is now amongst the living, what is living will someday be amongst the dead. Thus is the circle of life.
This photograph is part of a series of street portraits of the people who gather at various “live” stage performances, during the Chinese “Hungry Ghost Month”.
Hand-held long exposures are used to create an exaggerated sense of movement and softness. The deliberate tight cropping of each photograph enables the grain of the negative to be much more pronounced, making the subjects look almost like ash and dust.
7th Month Populace 2019
In Chinese Folk Culture, the 7th month in the Lunar Calendar is known as the “Hungry Ghost Month”. It is believed that during this period, the gates of hell are opened. A period when humans and spirits walk as one on earth. What was once dead is now amongst the living, what is living will someday be amongst the dead. Thus is the circle of life.
The photographs presented here consists of a series of street portraits of the people who gather at various “live” stage performances, during the Chinese “Hungry Ghost Month”.
Hand-held long exposures are used to create an exaggerated sense of movement and softness. The deliberate tight cropping of each photograph enables the grain of the negative to be much more pronounced, making the subjects look almost like ash and dust.
Note: The text above was written by the Artist. No modification was made by COCA.
HanShun Zhou
Singapore
https://www.zhouhanshun.com/7th-month-populace
Born and raised in Singapore, Zhou HanShun is a Photographic Artist and Art Director.
After graduating from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Singapore and RMIT University, he went on to make a living as an art director, and continues to pursue his passion as a visual storyteller and photographer.
He uses photography as a way to explore, investigate and document the culture and people in the cities he has lived in. Apart from discovering the aspects of everyday life, his work also seeks to explore the notion of spirituality and humanity in the urban environment. HanShun often photographs with intuition and creates work with a sense of spontaneity.
HanShun has exhibited at the Revela’T Contemporary Analog Photography Festival (2020), Lishui Photography Festival (2019), Mt. Rokko International Photography Festival (2019), KG+ Kyotographie Satellite Event (2018), Tumbas Cultural Center in Thessaloniki, Greece for Photoeidolo (2017), the Molekyl Gallery in Sweden, for the Malmo Fotobiennal (2017), the Gallery under Theater in Bratislava, Slovakia for The Month of Photography Bratislava(2017), the Czech China Contemporary Museum in Beijing for the SongZhuang International Photo Biennale(2017), the PhotoMetria “Parallel Voices” exhibition in Greece (2016), the Addis FotoFest in Ethiopia (2016), among others.