Infinite space

I could spend all my time alone, inside my head. Stopping and slowly smelling, discovering every curl of every bloom of every idea that pushes through the fleshy undergrowth. I could walk through the infinite space of a feeling, testing out the words to describe it by rolling them around my mouth like marbles. Left to my own devices, I could wander there and never come up for breath. Buried deep, secrets to make the heart burst, the mind shatter, the voices howl, whisper, mutter, moan. I could keep them company. Find the secrets to make the heart whole again, piece the mind back together and soothe the voices to silence.

I could paint the underside of my skin forest green, my ribcage a stone gray, my hands a deep vermillion. I could obsess over the memories of places I’ve never been before. That time we never floated on the mist shrouded lake, flame torches in our hands with honour on our lips and murder in our hearts. That time you never said you loved me and meant it.

All this in infinite space, alone, inside my head.

On Tour

 

Finally done showing at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, the show goes on tour for the next 2 years over 2012 & 2013 around Australia. I will update the schedule soon as I find out about it myself! Thanks to all the people that came out to see it and continue to show support for the work. It is an honour to share the small stories.

 

MERRY MERRY

This is how we do down under, holiday styles. Merry everything, live large & laugh lots, my friends!!!

xY

 

Angkor Angkor

Siem Reap, Cambodia

We cruise along in the wet heat, doubled over in laughter. No traffic lights, the vehicles govern themselves and we make do. From slideshows to gallery openings to peer reviews to spicy bowls of noodle soup, to long nights of pool and beer, we weave through the dusty streets, navigating potholes and trying not to marvel too much at the scenes floating by and causing an accident. I bring Miss Adrienne Grunwald with me and she falls in love and tries to come up with ways to stay.

I see and hold my far-flung friends and we share stories. The weird, sad, freaky, side-splittingly hilarious, private ones. Not the ones in pictures. This is so precious to me. My favourite time of the year.

A farewell to arms

A 19 year old Ernest Hemingway came here. Freshly bitten by war, looking for a place to rest his wounds, he chooses the grand dame, Hotel des Iles Borromees in Stresa, along the bank of Lake Maggiore.

In the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway | Stresa, Italy

“Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. It has only happened to me like that once.” E.H. speaks of love between Frederick Henry and Catharine Barclay in ‘A Farewell to Arms’, set in Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees.

Reflexions; Lugano edition

Back in Australia for the moment… Europe is done for now. At least until February. My second session of Reflexions Masterclass is over, this time in Lugano, and I emerge breathless, confident, inspired.

I’m frequently asked what the sessions are like, what a masterclass actually is and whether it really is as wanky as it all sounds. Despite the lofty sounding name, I can honestly say that I have never been in an environment where I have felt more humbled and yet at the same time more honored to be a part of such a… movement of artists. (Sounds wanky, huh.)

Candidly speaking, I have to admit, a small, exclusive, arduously selected group of photographers meeting at a different location in Europe 3 times a year to discuss the peaks and troughs of their work and ways in which to elevate it, may sound like a load of tripe. In this case, the reality is much, much cooler. The result of this particular group, which I will be sad to see the end of, is an alternately humorous, serious, always passionate, warm and affectionate salon of creatives, all dedicated to their work and deeply invested in photography and the complexities of life that create the images that end up on the discussion table. The demands of the masterclass, a 3 times yearly deadline to produce outstanding work, is to first and foremost bring one’s mind and attention to the work of your peers. It’s a matter of insight and sharing that reflection in the hopes that we would serve as a multi-faceted mirror to each other and hopefully shed light upon areas previously unnoticed or unseen.

Lugano, Switzerland | October 2011

Bare Bones

In the early hours of July 4th, I lay on the floor of my apartment and made another book.

Bare Bones
Edition 1 of 1.

L’ora del tramonto

Rome, Italy | Spring, 2011

(The violet hour)

MJR Print Editions ~ Ying Ang

So my little story zine is here, freshly printed and ready to be consumed! Come say hi at Look3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville to get yourself a copy or else you can try to chase me across various American states over the summer… but no promises… 🙂

Supplication

I offered my heart in supplication. I offered it up for a life that was fuller… full-bodied, full-blooded, full-flavoured. I was given everything as a child. Everything that I was told I could ever want. Everything it was written that a little girl could possibly desire in her charmed, pink, lilac scented life, in every story book ever written that made it to a mainstream bookshelf. There was only one mistake. I was never that girl. My favourite colour was green, not pink. Green was the colour of hope, the colour of the ink that Neruda used to pen his odes to the crashing sea and the long length of Chile. My favourite scent was tree, not lilac, not to be bottled and sold duty-free.

So when the time came, I made a deal. Incision of the deepest kind, slicing through the safety of story-book comforts, I cut free the most precious part of me and held it up to the world. To be attacked, to be protected, to be valued, ignored, spat upon, cherished, I held it up in supplication. As a result, perhaps it’s a little more worn than the rest, a little ragged around the edges… but it pulses in response to a beat that resounds louder and with more conviction than I ever had in the lilac-frilled life my parents had wanted to give me.

And now there is my story, not theirs, in all its complexities and simplicities, madness and humanity. An opera.

Hong Kong | February, 2011

…They were too mortal to take it. They were mind-stuff,
Provisional, speculative, mere auras.
Sound-barrier events along your flight path.
But inside your sob-sodden kleenex
And your saturday night panics,
Under your hair done this way and done that way,
Behind what looked like rebounds
And the cascade of cries diminuendo,
You were undeflected.
You were gold-jacketed, solid silver,
Nickel-tipped. Trajectory perfect
As through ether. Even the cheek-scar,
Where you seemed to have side-swiped concrete,
Served as a rifling groove
To keep you true…

~ excerpt from “The Shot” by Ted Hughes