Independent writer, Curator and Artist, Singapore

Zhuang Wubin

Zhuang Wubin is a writer who makes photographs, publications and exhibitions. He is interested in photography’s entanglements with modernity, colonialism, nationalism, “Chineseness,” and the Cold War in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. Zhuang received his PhD by Published Work (Research–Photography) from University of Westminster, London.

Zhuang is a recipient of the Prince Claus Fund research grant (2010) and a Lee Kong Chian research fellow at the National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore (Dec 2017 to Jun 2018). Zhuang is the major grantee of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant 2018. He has been invited to research residency programmes at Institute Technology of Bandung (2013), Asia Art Archive (AAA), Hong Kong (2015), Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2017) and the Ha Bik Chuen Archive Project at AAA (2018). He is the contributing curator of the Chiang Mai Photo Festival (2015, 2017, 2020).

Published by NUS Press, Photography in Southeast Asia: A Survey (2016) is his fourth book. In 2019, Zhuang received the J Dudley Johnston Award and Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain for that publication. The Chinese translation is published in 2019 by VOP BOOKS, Taipei.

Zhuang is a founding member of Writing Foto (writingfoto.wordpress.com), a growing collection of writings on photography loosely directed at the imaginaries of South/east Asia.

Editor, Publisher, Founder and Director of Jiazazhi Press & Photobook Library (China)

Yanyou Yuan Di

Yanyou Yuan Di is an editor, publisher, founder and director of Jiazazhi Press & Photobook Library. He has participated in numerous art book fairs and exhibitions in New York, Paris, Tokyo etc. He has also curated more than 20 books for Chinese photographers. Some of the books he curated were nominated and awarded in famous photobook awards, such as Kassel Fotobook Award, Paris Photo-Aperture Photobook Award, Rencontres d’Arles Author Book Awards etc.

He is also the curator of various photobook events in China, such as Chinese Independent Photobook Exhibition at Caocangdi Photo Season 2012, Handmade Photobooks in China at Beijing Photography Biennale 2014, JimeixArles Photobook Fair 2016 and Lianzhou Foto Festival Independent Photobook Fair 2017. He also initiated Jiazazhi Photobook Festival 2017 and co-curated Unfold 2020 Shanghai Art Book Fair. He has been the judge of the New Talent Award, Singapore Photography International Festival, T3 Photo Festival Tokyo, and Photo One Taipei.

Artist, Publisher & Founder of European Photography (Germany)

Andreas Müller-Pohle

Andreas Müller-Pohle is a Berlin-based media artist and the founder and publisher of European Photography, an independent art magazine for contemporary photography and new media.

He has published the major works of media philosopher Vilém Flusser, available in the eleven-volume Edition Flusser, including the seminal Philosophy of Photography, which has been translated into over twenty languages. With the publication of Flusser’s essay Die Schrift: Hat Schreiben Zukunft? (Does Writing Have a Future?) in 1986 on floppy disk, he is one of the pioneers of today’s e-book.

Andreas is the author of numerous texts on photo theory and has served as a visiting professor and lecturer at institutions in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Since 1978, his works have been shown in over 200 solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Recently, he has been pursuing two long-term projects: Studies on Water, with portraits of the water landscapes of the Danube and the megapolis of Hong Kong, and Studies on Traffic, in which he investigates traffic phenomena in various regions of the world, primarily using the medium of video.
– equivalence.com, muellerpohle.net, waterimages.net

Chairman of the Hong Kong International Photo Festival, Hong Kong

Lau Ching-ping

Lau Ching-Ping, lives in Hong Kong, makes creative work on education, design and photography. He was a co-founder of photo art magazine ‘Dislocation’, part-time lecturer of the CUHK, HKU, HKU Space, HK Art School, Lumenvisum, HK Heritage Museum and M+ Museum. Won the WYNG Master Award AIR Project (2013-2014), realised the project in the Photo art book “Thin as air”. He is the current chair of Hong Kong International Photo Festival. He hopes to face the world’s future with an optimistic aperture setting.

Independent Photographer and Artist

Kurt Tong

Born in Hong Kong in 1977, Kurt gained his Masters in documentary photography at the LCC in 2006 and began working on much more personal projects exploring his Chinese roots and understanding of his motherland. ‘In Case it Rains in Heaven’ , exploring the practice of Chinese funeral offerings, has been widely exhibited including a solo exhibition at Compton Verney and features in several public collections. A monograph of the work was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2011.

‘The Queen, The Chairman and I’, which reconnected the artist with his Chinese roots, is a multilayered narrative book dealing with the story of Hong Kong of the last 100 years and the Asian Diaspora through the lives of his own family. The work is presented as a Chinese teahouse. The project has been exhibited across 4 continents. The monograph was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing and Lianzhou Musuem of Photography in 2019.

‘Combing for Ice and Jade’, a love letter to the artist’s nanny, one of the few remaining self combed women in the world, has won him numerous awards and has been shown at the Himalayas Museum in Shanghai, Finnish Musuem of Photography and Rencontres d’Arles amongst others. A monograph of the work was published by Jiazazhi Press in 2019 and was named one of best Photobooks of 2019 by Time, El País, Esquire, Art Paper amongst others.

In 2022, Kurt was awarded the prestige Prix Elysee and released ‘Dear Franklin’, an epistolary novel about a tragic love story during WW2 in China. The book was co published by Atelier EXB and Photo Elysee and is available in English and French. He is represented by The Photographer’s Gallery in London, Up Gallery in Taiwan and Jen Bekman Gallery in New York.