3 Minutes with Ng Wu Gang
Ng Wu Gang (b.1988, Singapore) is a visual artist and a photographer. He graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. Wu Gang has participated in various group shows such as the Noise Festival (2015), and UNTAPPED DISCOVERY at Visual Arts Development Association of Singapore (VADA), which features eight up-and-coming, Singapore-based artists hand-picked by the UNTAPPED Advisory Committee. He was also the recipient of the Winston Oh Travel Award (2015).
1) How did you first learn to boil a polaroid?
Can’t exactly remember when. I do remember that I was very intrigued by the distorted polaroids that I had for my Winston Oh Travel Awards so I started playing around with the polaroids. Sprinkling with water, drying it with hairdryer, using hairpins to draw on it. It was more of being playful with it. Of course, boiling the polaroid was learnt from YouTube, since the polaroid that come out from that particular camera didn’t have a negative so I wanted to make a version of it.
The Pain We Leave Behind This Wretched Place
2) Were you always trained in photography? If not, how did you first introduced to the medium?
I had a friend from Secondary School that we shared hobbies with, we used to play computer games together first. Since army, I didn’t have much time to play around with a computer and mobile phones weren’t a thing then (first gen of iPhone just came out and it didn’t have an app store). He showed me his first DSLR, and subsequently his SLR and I was really interested in it, and I started to delve into it.
3) What first motivated you to start shooting your father? Was it the need to archive, to document?
It was a project for my school. It was for “bodies at rest”. My dad is an overly hard working man, and doesn’t believe in rest. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2015 and I was obsessed about how he was resting more, mostly not even working at all. At first it was really just to deal with the school project, and then later, I received a comment of “Why aren’t you taking pictures more of people?”. So I started to take more pictures of my dad.
Endeavour (2014-2015)
4) How do you collect and then maintain your old cameras and film? Why do you invest so much into this ‘dying trade’?
One of my ex-lecturer gave me majority of his cameras and films. I fridge majority of the films that I later bought. Cameras and films that can’t be fridged will be kept in a dry cabinet.
I don’t really know, I really enjoy it I guess.
5) What are some of the things you look out for when deciding on places or people to photograph?
I don’t know how to answer this question, it’s a very instinctual kind of thing, it also depends heavily on the mood. But I usually look at the light of the area, the subject matter at hand, and when it comes to the people, the “candid moment”
6) What is the most important part of a photograph, in your opinion?
This is a very broad question, you’d have to ask what is the photograph meant to be. A head shot of a corporate bank company wouldn’t hold the same value of the only portrait of someone’s great great grandfather. The photograph has to mean something to the beholder for it to have a value, and that something is usually the most important part of the photograph.
7) Where do you see photography culture in 20 years, and where do you see yourself?
I don’t know, the photography culture moves too quickly, 5 years ago I was using the Nikon system. And to ask myself 5 years ago if I would abandon the Nikon subculture and to move onto a new culture of Sony’s, I’d laugh at the how ridiculous it is. If you were to ask what I’m moving towards in terms of Polaroids, I’m intending to try out a new camera that is about to be sent any moment to me. It uses a more common “instax wide” film that is usually more accessible to people, cheaper as well. Will it disappear in 5 years? Who knows?
