Artist Talk with Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze
about his latest project: City Poetry 城市詩意
City Poetry - Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze '九龍 - The Nine Dragons' Hong Kong 2019, courtesy of Blue Lotus Gallery
Saturday 8 June, 4-6 pm
at Blue Lotus Gallery, 28 Pound Lane, Sheung Wan
free of charge
RSVP here: christina@bluelotus-gallery.com
Meet the photographer behind projects such as The Blue Moment and Concrete Stories. Hear about his most personal project to date City Poetry 城市詩意 and the process behind it. This is the perfect chance to ask questions to the photographer and to get your books signed by the artist.
與拍攝《天台故事》及《藍色時分》系列的攝影師會面，了解其新系列《城市詩意》背後創作的過程；把握向攝影師提問的機會及即場購買其親筆簽名攝影集。
More about the project:
‘City Poetry’ is Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze’s most personal project to date, a photographic exercise that shows the artist further deepening his roots in Hong Kong and Cantonese culture. How might a photographer approach learning a language? Through photography of course. Jacquet-Lagrèze set himself the task of documenting visually striking street signs and took them home where his wife would help to translate, slowly enabling him to decipher the characters that adorn this city’s streets. As his archive grew so did his knowledge, forming sentences with photographs of individual characters results in poems that are both visual and linguistic. His relationship to his wife as they expect their first baby echoes as he takes his first steps in the local language; celebrating the action of sharing culture and the joy that comes from learning a language. Hong Kong is one of the last places in Asia where traditional characters are still in daily use, we are literally surrounded by ancient texts that hark back to the Han Dynasty of the 5th century. Modern street signs derive from the art form of calligraphy and ‘City Poetry’ shows different typographies and mediums, such as painted, neons, metal, tile and concrete work.
與拍攝《天台故事》及《藍色時分》系列的攝影師會面，了解其新系列《城市詩意》背後創作的過程。
「城市詩意」是Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze 最新的個人企劃，今輯攝影系列印證了這位法籍攝影師對於香港及其語言文化的熱愛再度昇華。作為攝影師如何學習新語言？當然是透過攝影！Jacquet-Lagrèze自發以攝影紀錄街上各種充滿視覺魅力的招牌，帶回家中讓太太協助翻譯，漸漸地，他學會解讀滿佈大街小巷的文字密碼。他儲下了大批這樣的文字照片，中文知識亦隨之加深。他更運用這些文字照片拼砌成有「詩意」的句子，巧妙地集合「視覺」與「語文」於一身。
在與太太迎接第一個新生命的同時，Romain決心踏出了深入本地文化的一步，他熱心地了解本地文化，廣東話隨之日益進步。香港是依然以繁體字為主的最後堡壘之一。每天圍繞著我們生活的，是從久遠的漢代流傳至今的古典文字。現代的街道招牌刻劃著書法之美，而「城市詩意」系列將不同字體與素材（如：油漆、霓虹燈、金屬、磚瓦和混凝土等）拼湊起來，形成獨特並具文化意識的作品。
Watch the trailer:
Previous Book Projects by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze:
