The Hong Kong photographer Chun Wai’s photo collection – A Revelrous Heterotopia – focuses on capturing an instance of such revelry and intoxication. For more than 20 years since 1995, he recorded diligently the snippets of life that transpired in the Hong Kong Sevens, each captured moment examined for its inner meaning and metaphor. Rendered in a theatrical style and relaying a single context, over a hundred photographs are deliberately dissociated from time and space, presented as if happening during a single day. This de-contextualized and de-temporalized expression establishes the spatial-temporal uncertainty of those captured in the frame, with characters appearing as if emerging from a space different from our own.

A Revelrous Heterotopia presents the author's keen and unique perspective in portrait photography and his skillful shooting skills; the author uses black and white portraits in medium gray scale with medium particles throughout the book, allowing readers to enter the images with a calm and detached mind, and to delve into the hidden metaphors of the photographs. The book contains three essays that provide readers with multi-dimensional reflections, exploring issues such as the reverse thinking inspired by the origin of rugby, the association between the phenomenon of fan rave and the meaning behind the "Carnival Culture" proposed by the former Soviet literary theorist Bakhtin, the relationship between photography and theater, and the language and thinking of photography. A Reverlous Heterotopia is both a light-hearted, humorous collection of photographs, and a photo essay that presents a different kind of thought.

About the Author

The artist Chun Wai was born and raised in Hong Kong.

He graduated from the École supérieure d'art de Mulhouse and earned his Diplôme national supérieur d'expression plastique (DNSEP) from the Ministry of Culture in France. His graduate work focused on integrating Western contemporary art with Eastern aesthetics. He believes that art should never be rigid, but open to all of life. Photography is his primary medium, along with sculpture and installation. He consistently emphasizes that photography provides a pathway to explore the meaning of existence and being, and creates a space for reflection.

After completing his studies in France, he devoted himself to working as a photojournalist, led by his personal artistic beliefs. He travelled around the world to experience the era's confusion and sorrow. Chun's work is meticulous and allegorical. His photographic perspective focuses on interpreting eras of rapid change. By employing both a poetic and prose-like style in his documentary photography, he highlights the anguish and inescapable fate of humans.

He also has won several Human Rights Press Awards, and in 2011, he co-founded the non-governmental organization Health in Action, with friends from the medical field and other professions. Health in Action upholds the belief of humanitarianism, providing medical services to vulnerable communities, and is committed to promoting health equity.

His published collections include Another Horizon, Under Heaven and Cubical Life.