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Along with the development of technology and living standards, photography in Vietnam has witnessed an explosion in the number of creators and viewers. However, accompanying this rapid growth is a noteworthy reality: the artistic quality of many works remains limited, often falling into the rut of "beautiful" postcard-style photos, lacking uniqueness and creativity.
Fortunately, everywhere and at all times, the limitations of the old will be an opportunity for the new to emerge. Street photography seems to be running out of creativity, with many works merely recording reality, lacking transformation and in-depth exploration.
The exhibition offered a completely new perspective on street photography.
It is within this somewhat limited creative space that Nguyen Thanh Dung has emerged as a breath of fresh air. With a unique collection of works, he has demonstrated his ability to transform reality, creating images that are not only visually stunning but also emotionally rich, offering a completely new perspective on street photography.
"Kaleidoscopic Vision" - a giant kaleidoscope that transports you into a magical visual world.
Beyond the physical representation of photographic works, "Kaleidoscopic Vision" offers a multi-dimensional visual experience, like a giant kaleidoscope constantly transforming, reflecting, and recreating urban spaces in myriad forms. The works transport viewers into a parallel universe, where familiar street corners are recreated through the lens of an unfamiliar world.
The photo series is a collection of real illusions, where familiar scenes are distorted into bizarre images.
It's a colorful visual space, with overlapping and blending patches of color creating visual effects that are both familiar and fantastical, even bizarre. It's like seeing through the eyes of an alien or an insect firsthand the modern urban world with its glass, metal, plastic, and electric lights. Every subject in the series isn't clearly defined or strategically placed; instead, they are always hazy and subtly interwoven between definitions.
The artworks offer a fantastical visual experience.
Redefining street photography by photographer Nguyen Thanh Dung.
Using abstract visual language, combined with poetic color schemes and composition, the "Kaleidoscopic Vision" series offers a unique and novel form of street photography. These are still street photographs, in their purest form, with images captured in public spaces through a process of searching for and capturing what is inherent, without any staging or calculation.
Photographer Nguyen Thanh Dung.
Nguyen Thanh Dung shared about the process of creating this exhibition: “Living between the two cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, I have learned to appreciate the magical and colorful beauty of everyday life. When I discovered that colors carry incredibly profound emotional nuances through visual experience, I completely relaxed my rational mind and let my emotions and the colors blend together through the frame of the camera.”
I worked on the 'Kaleidoscopic Vision' series for over a year, starting when I was beginning to experiment more with telephoto lenses in street photography. The idea for the series really came from the first one or two photos, when I found the abstraction in the way I expressed it, and I continued in that direction, gradually developing into a larger series from this perspective. This is a unique perspective that brings a fresh new feel to street photography as well as abstraction in photography.
This offers a unique and fresh perspective on street photography and abstraction in photography.
Through the exhibition 'Kaleidoscopic Vision', I want to convey to the audience a fresh perspective on Vietnamese streets. It could be the hustle and bustle, the profoundness, or the emotions created by color. I hope the exhibition will transport viewers to another world, a world with a subjective viewpoint that reflects, to some extent, the inner world of Nguyen Thanh Dung. Through this, viewers will gain a clearer understanding of the beauty of the streets and familiar corners in a very different way, and experience powerful emotions as they stand before a colorful visual feast."
The "Kaleidoscopic Vision" exhibition, featuring 20 artworks, will be open to the public at Noirfoto, 131 Duong Van An Street, Thu Duc City, from August 18th, 2024 to September 1st, 2024, excluding Sundays and Mondays.
