I was happy to see that some portraits that I shot a while ago for Stern Magazine have finally been published as the current issue’s cover story. The story had been on the brink of running a few times over the past six months or so. The new Asia correspondent Philipp Mathias updated it with insights into the coronavirus crisis. All portraits apart from the opening double page spread were shot on film. I shot digital in tandem, but it seems that the photo team liked the look of the ones shot on 645 format on some (mostly) expired Kodak Portra I had kicking around in my fridge. The idea of the portraits was to show a cross section of Chinese society. There are five short break out interviews in the piece. Most of the subjects were photographed in Shanghai apart from one at a village deep in Anhui. All of the people had fascinating stories. It’s a pity not all of them could make it into the feature.
The opening page spread was shot a couple of weeks ago in Shantou, Guangdong Province. That assignment was exclusively shot on digital since I had to file that same evening. I spend three hours wandering around Shantou with Stanley Chan a sci-fi author and screenwriter. It’s an interesting town that was a treaty port like Shanghai. This city of around 5 million was more important one hundred years ago than it is now. It’s been eclipsed by the likes of Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Our walk took us through the old colonial district. Some of the building were falling down and had trees growing out of them. There’s a sort of preservation thing going on, but it consists of knocking the buildings down and rebuilding them, which makes the new ones seem kind of fake.
Anyway, I’ve increasingly been shooting some editorial assignments on film over the last couple of years film because it slows down the process and also tends to pique the interest of the subject so I focus a bit more on the task at hand and so do they. With only 15 shots per roll on my Pentax 645NII, I really have to think about each shot and the limitations of film (mostly the ASA and associated slower shutter speeds) make me shoot a certain way. The tonal range of colour negative is really great for portraits too. The look is quite distinctive.
Anyway, here’s a tear sheet and a closer look at some of the portraits from the assignment as well as some that didn’t make the spread.
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