National Museum of Singapore/Editions Didier Millet $45

Chang Chien-Chi’s mid-career retrospective gives viewers – and in this case, readers – a welcome jolt out of complacency. That’s because the Taiwanese photographer’s work evokes narrative elegance, drama and nuance, and produces multi-layered, tightly constructed stories that meld art, journalism and documentary. These are photos that are fearless and ruthless in their composition, and they serve to draw you back again and again.


Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos

Of the 20 pages of text and 60 pages of images in this paperback, it’s the latter that tells the story powerfully and mutely. In one photograph that’s currently on display at the National Museum, a foreign Chinese worker sits in his underpants on a fire escape in steamy Manhattan. But he is not alone; he is actually part of a series that includes three sleeping bodies stacked like dominos that offer us a glimpse of peaceful and dreamy Mongol faces. There’s also evidence all around of a decaying apartment interspersed with signs of industry, tenacity and longed-for entertainment. Each set demands close scrutiny; you can ‘read’ them again and hunt for clues in watches, wrinkles, a clothes peg, and ultimately, the emotion in their eyes.

Chang himself contributes sparse paragraphs to explain his oeuvre, but he is suitably pre-empted by Chinese academic Xiang Biao and renowned New York writer Vicki Goldberg, who deliver graceful eulogies on his marginal subjects like immigrant labour, brides for sale and mad men. These are stories that never grow old.