During the early 19th century artists were expected to draw and paint in the realistic style, to depict themes and objects in a faithful manner. Around that time photography was invented, and many appreciated it for its ability to faithfully represent reality. In the beginning it was viewed as a technology, with a negligible artistic dimension. Indeed, photography as a medium for creative expression was not recognized until the middle of the 20th century, nearly a 100 years after its invention. Over the last 20 years, photography has gradually transformed into a predominantly digital medium. Digital photography has expanded the boundaries of lens-based image making processes in such a way as their relevance has been eroded. Traditionally, photography was only about recording an event or moment by ‘freezing time’, hence photographs embodied an inherent quality of truth, giving the field of photography a legal status as an evidentiary tool. With the development of image editing and manipulation software, this aspect of photography was called into question; ‘the truth’ that photographs once conveyed was lost.

“After Photography” intends to explore the diverse photographic practices in the digital era. It seeks to examine the inherent ability of the digital medium to traverse the real and the imaginary, the truth and the fiction. The included artists are Xing Danwen (China), Gustavo Lacerda (Brazil), Angki Purdando (Indonesia), Jim Ramer (USA), Wong HoyCheong (Malaysia), Yao Lu (China), Guo Yixiu (Singapore), and the artist collective Grieve Perspective (Singapore based). Through the selected works, “After Photography” showcases the diverse approaches that artists take in incorporating digital technology in their artistic practices and the consequent expansion of the boundaries of the photographic medium.

There is significant evidence that digital photography makes it easier for artists to narrate stories within their frames. Both featured Chinese artists Xing Danven and Yao Lu, employed digital photography to create a fictional world. Xing Danwen’s large-scale photographic series titled “Urban Fiction” is a hybrid of digital and film work. The artist spent a few years abroad and traveled extensively in Europe. Upon her return to Beijing in the early 2000s, Danwen observed the rapid economic growth and the consequent construction boom. The old city she knew had completely disappeared, and a new one had emerged. Within this newly established metropolis, she noticed how daily lives become routine and all cities look identical no matter where they are located. The project is a combination of photography and performance. Digital photography has enabled her to bring together the two chapters in photography: truth and fiction.

Yao Lu is also concerned with the rapidly changing landscape in China. He illustrates his ecological concern regarding the land exploitation in China through his photographs. His photographs look like traditional Chinese paintings: long scrolls and heavy use of empty space. These mystic landscapes feature peaceful moments in nature and exotic animals, e.g. cranes, tigers, white horses etc. According to the artist, the green net that covers the mountains in his photographs is for preventing the land from sliding due to the excessive land digging and piling. Indeed, the mountains have become dumpsites, and the land is filled with rubbish. His landscape photographs are not taken from actual sites, but rather digitally created within the artist’s studio. Within his photographs the artist leaves visual clues for viewers to discover and to make sense of. Yao Lu claimed that through digital photographic manipulation he was able to create an illusion in the viewers’ minds that questions what is real and what is fictional.

‘Grieve Perspective’ is an artist collective based in Singapore. The group’s interest centers on the idea of death and loss. By adapting multiple unrelated episodes and cultural symbols specific to the South Asian region, the group implicitly deals with the impermanence of human life. In one of their works, the group focuses on the story of Lam Qua, commonly considered to be the first Chinese artist trained in the Western oil painting tradition and known for his series of medical paintings depicting deformed patients. The group created their own narrative addressing the unavoidableness of death even for Lam Qua himself, who had explored through his own work the theme of death. The group digitally recreated Lam Qua’s skull within a museum vitrine and digitally lighted it with an environment sourced from the National Museum of Singapore. In this manner the artist who studied the death of others becomes himself the subject of an artistic exploration of death.

What is real and what is fictional is a recurring question when viewers are faced with portrait photographs. Brazilian artist Gustavo Lacerda takes Albinos as the subjects of his photographs. He documents them on a northern island of Brazil where the majority of Albinos are shunned, threatened and subject to significant prejudice. The perception of albinism varies widely in the world. In the West, Hollywood movies and advertisements portray Albinos as mysterious and beautiful, but in Tanzania many are murdered due to cultural ignorance. Gustavo intends to add a touch of “fiction” in this documentary project that leads him to invite the sitters of his photographs to his studio. He creates backdrops, applies make up, and stylizes clothes and hairstyles for each sitter. Besides achieving aesthetically controlled photographs, the elaborate production makes the moment special for the sitter. The artist has noticed that in the course of such a photo session the self-esteem and confidence of the sitter is boosted. His portraits depict how noble and beautiful Albinos are. The real and the fictional are questioned through the portraiture work of Brazilian artist Gustavo Lacerda, as he takes albinism as the subject in his photographs. He documents albinos on a northern island of Brazil where majority of albinos are shunned away from threats and prejudices of society. The perception about albinism varies widely in the world. In the West, Hollywood movies and advertisements portray albinos as mysterious and beautiful, but in Tanzania, many are murdered due to cultural ignorance. Gustavo intends to add a touch of “fiction” in this documentary project that leads him to invite the sitters of his photographs to his studio. He creates backdrops, applies make up, and stylizes clothes and hairstyles for each sitter. Besides achieving aesthetic controlled photographs, the elaborated production makes the moment special for the sitter through which occasion the artist notices such a photo session actually boosts up the self-esteem of the sitter. His portraits depict how noble and beautiful albinos are.

Jim Ramer’s photo installation ‘Alien’ challenges viewers to think about what is familiar and what is foreign. With digital manipulation, the artist cleverly transforms the familiar and recognizable landscape of the thermal fields of New Zealand into an unfamiliar and foreign landscape. He challenges the viewers’ imagination and their ability to recognize and to make sense of the space. In his work he manipulates in the scene the things that are assumed to provide accurate information: the colors, relative scale, and the directions. His manipulation is selective and the result is to create new sets of imaginary landscapes. The artist claims that his photographs question how we see and understand our realities in a post photographic world. While many photographers employ digital technology to enhance existing scenes and to narrate fictional stories, the ‘Alien’ series explores digital technology in order to subvert reality.

Driven by creative innovation, artists like Guo Yixiu and Angki Purdando explore alternative options to the camera itself in order to challenge the conventions of image making. The Indonesian artist Angki is known for his flatbed scanned photographs. Prior to that he had explored various options to creating photographs without a camera, by placing objects on photosensitive paper. This work arose by chance, whilst he was watching his roommate, who worked as a library archivist, scanning documents on a flatbed scanner. It was at that point that he realized that the job of a photographer was no different from the job of a library archivist. Angki then played with the flatbed scanner and directly scanned objects for documentation. The traditional function of photography being to record the truth was the starting point of his scenography.

Coming from a painting background, Singaporean artist Guo YiXiu is not fully satisfied with the capture of immediate scenes through the lens. In her conceptually oriented project ‘Chope’, the artist worked on the subject of Singaporean national identity, a subject close to the heart of many young Singaporeans. The artist has photographed tissue packages on a product light table and using studio lighting, lit it to best enhance the volume of the object. She used the captured data to build up her photomontage of culturally significant symbolic objects from the three main cultural groups of Singapore: Chinese, Malay, and Indian. What appears to be a dot in her photographs is actually a tissue package that she captured in the studio. The artist painstakingly builds up her photomontage manually dot by dot, in other words, pixel by pixel. The process is laborious and the result is stunning. Eventually she shows not one culture, but many cultures coexisting in Singapore.

Commissioned by the Lyon Biennale 2009, Wong HoyCheong worked with several paintings from the collection of the Lyon Museum of Fine Arts in France. In the series ‘Days of our lives’, the artist alters classical European paintings by replacing the original symbols representing Europe with visual symbols signifying Europe’s former colonial ties to Africa and South Asia. In doing so, the artist appropriates the selected photographs and reverses the influence that the colonizer had on the colonized. HoyCheong’s photographs are printed on canvas to imitate oil paintings, and displayed within classical European painting frames. The artist offers his political views echoed in the colonial history. Digital technology has allowed the artist to alter the reality and juxtapose new meanings.