Photo project a big draw
20 years on, photos of 14 great Chinese ink painters still attract crowds at exhibitions
Chua Soo Bin (above, on the cover of his book) decided to photograph 14 great Chinese ink painters who were regarded as the best of their generation. They include Shanghai artist Liu Haisu, seen painting a nude with his student Liu Kang from Singapore. -- PHOTOS: CHUA SOO BIN. LU YI FEI Had Chua Soo Bin been concerned about the lack of market for his art 26 years ago, he could not have created a long-lasting legend much celebrated at home and abroad since it was first presented in Singapore in 1989.
His exhibition and book, Legends: Soo Bin's Portraits Of Chinese Ink Masters, would not have seen the light of day, let alone gone strong after all these years. Yet another China tour kicked off at the Zhejiang Art Museum in Hangzhou early this month.
As the editor of his book, I was at the opening in Hangzhou on Aug 4, together with some close friends of his who had flown there to support him.
Background story
Unique images
These portraits are so enduring that they remain to this day the only definitive images of a generation of artists in their twilight years. They are also endearing because they portray the subjects as warm and sometimes quirky human beings complete with their idiosyncracies.
He is the only photographer the museum has exhibited apart from American Ansel Adams whose works were shown there last year.
Back in 1985, Soo Bin gave up his glamorous career of taking pictures for big-time advertising campaigns like those of Singapore Airlines because he found them too transient. Despite the many accolades he had won as a travel photo-grapher, he decided to embark on a different yet much more uncertain and risky journey.
He took on a project to photograph 14 great Chinese ink painters who were regarded as the best of their generation, convinced that he would be producing works of more lasting artistic value. The prospect of not making ends meet on such a project was the last thing on his mind.
The featured artists - Zhu Qizhan, Liu Haisu, Huang Chun-pi, Chao Shao'an, Chen Wen Hsi, C.C. Wang, Li Keran, Ye Qianyu, Wu Zuoren, Lu Yanshao, Xie Zhiliu, Li Xiongcai, Tang Yun and Guan Shanyue - who were 80 and older then have since died.
To photograph his subjects he had to travel frequently to various places in China, Taipei, Hong Kong and New York.
Without any funding other than his own savings or hope for a profitable outcome, he plunged headlong into a massive five-year venture many would consider foolhardy even today. He was acting with the resolve and courage of the proverbial adventurer insisting on going into the mountain knowing full well he will encounter tigers.
One of the 'tigers' or serious difficulties he ran into along the way was when he landed in hospital for a few weeks after suffering from a stroke due to stress. But he recovered quickly to complete his work.
Over the past two decades, this collection of 84 photographs of 14 Chinese artists has been shown in 18 museums in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Invitations to exhibit in various other Chinese cities are still coming in as there are many in the vast country eager to see it.
During the week-long show in Hangzhou, more than 20 news-papers and television stations across China gave it extensive coverage, reaching millions of readers and viewers. The local Qianjiang Evening News, with a daily circulation of 1.4 million, reported it in a generous two-page spread - rare, said a museum official, for an arts event.
A Shanghai TV network has produced a long documentary on Soo Bin and his work, which will be broadcast in two parts later.
Visitors young and old flocked around him at the museum wanting to have his autograph and pictures taken with him. Hundreds of copies of the book that accompanies the exhibition were snapped up on the opening day.
The book, first published in Chinese in 1989, was republished in a set of Chinese and English editions by Sichuan Art Publishing and Foreign Languages Press in Beijing respectively in 2005, and is now into its second reprint.
These portraits are so enduring that they remain to this day the only definitive images of a generation of artists in their twilight years. They are also endearing because they portray the subjects as warm and sometimes quirky human beings complete with their idiosyncracies.
No other photographers had taken pictures of these artists in the way that Soo Bin had. To borrow the words of the French master Henri Cartier-Bresson, he 'put the camera between the skin of a person and his shirt'.
Singapore artist Chen Wen Hsi, for instance, loved durians and set high standards for his art by destroying his inferior works with fire. Liu Haisu caused a huge outrage in Shanghai in 1915 by introducing live nude models in the academy and kept in touch with his student Liu Kang from Singapore. Such close details about the artists abound throughout Soo Bin's works.
He took great pains to do research on each of the subjects, a task especially daunting for a complete outsider from Singapore like him.
'He is simply amazing. Although these artists had been so close to us for such a long time, we had never thought of photographing them in the way he did,' says Madam Mao Xiaofang, deputy secretary of the Zhejiang Photographers' Society. 'Mind you, five of the 14 artists were among us here in Hangzhou alone.'
Perhaps that is what sets Soo Bin apart from his photographer friends in China. Not only has he made portraits of many other luminaries in China such as artists Wu Guanzhong and Zhou Sicong, actor Ying Ruocheng and writer Bing Xin, he has also done no less for Singapore artists who are 'so close to us'.
He took portraits of 56 artists for the book Singapore Artists Speak published by artist Thomas Yeo in 1990. However, the book, which was the first of its kind here, focused more on the artists' works than their portraits.
Soo Bin flatly denies the frequent suggestion that he used his photography projects to promote the gallery business he started in 1990. 'I have never dealt in the works of those artists featured in Legends,' he declares.
More of his portraits of Singapore artists such as Liu Kang, Pan Shou, Wu Tsai Yen, Teo Eng Seng, Anthony Poon and Chng Seok Tin remain unpublished. It would be a great pity if he leaves them languishing in his enormous archives.
In Soo Bin's treasure chest of photographic images is certainly material for more legends from our Singapore arts scene.
Now at 79, he is still busy organising exhibitions at his gallery Soo-Bin Art International at Ubi.
Whenever I persuade him to publish his other photographs, he will say: 'Just give me more time!'
The writer is the executive director of Art Retreat incorporating Wu Guanzhong Gallery.
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