Shenzhen Photo Story Exhibition

Last Sunday evening I had the pleasure of being invited to present some of my photos along with ten other photographers at a “Photo Story Exhibition and Salon” held at Yishu Art Book Bar in Shekou, Shenzhen. While a few of my photos have been used in a couple of museum exhibitions, I’d never properly presented them before and was a bit nervous to be doing so alongside real professionals!


All photos in this post were shot by Tangtang.

Presenters left to right: Lili YangDave LearnChristian NascaLily FangJesse WarrenSarah Li CainXiaoci BaiRicky Nyhoff, Me!, Stefano, & Dingping Zhang (not pictured). The venue was a really nice open space with bookshelves and some of the photos exhibited lining the walls.

The format was that each photographer presented five of their favourite photos and shared the stories behind them, lasting about 8 minutes. It was good to have such a diverse group of foreigners and Chinese presenting together and a sizable crowd of about 60 people turned up to watch.

Representing Great Britain – yours truly! I have never much enjoyed presenting in front of crowds of strangers and to add to my nerves I was asked to go first. While I don’t think I was quite at the same level as the others I think it went OK and was very pleased to have been asked to be there! If you’re interested these are the photos I presented – I’ve attached descriptions on Flickr.

A lot of the photos were from people’s travels and many had some fascinating stories to tell about both the places they had visited and the techniques they had used to capture the moment. It really gave me a lot of motivation to improve my own skills and try new things.

Overall it was a great evening which had been expertly arranged by Lily Fang, who I had met through the previous PechaKucha Night, at which she had also been presenting. It seems I was wrong, there is quite a lot of creativity simmering under the surface of Shenzhen and hopefully, this event becomes a regular series.

David avatar

14 responses

  1. nice to meet you and hear your stories the other night. and very nice blog!

    Dave

    1. Thanks & good to meet you also – love your photos from Beijing, I really miss there…

  2. Actually you performed very well and I didn’t feel you are nervous at there.hahahah.Maybe you need dinner before presentation? :p

    BTW,I would like to attend such kind of activities more and more in the future,it was really nice.

  3. Hi David, congratulation for the very nice blog.
    Thanks for this article and linking the names with our own pages. Was a real pleasure be part of this and, as it was for you, I was terribly nervous been my very first time esposing my work at a live audience, luckly I was not the first!
    Was nice to meet all of you.

    1. Thanks Stefano, I’m looking forward to the next time and seeing what people come up with 🙂

  4. Hi David,

    Got to admit I didn’t even recognise you in these photos!

    Great blog, still. 🙂

    1. Hey Nik, long time no see, thanks for the comment – I’ve not changed that much but unfortunately have a lot less hair now!

  5. this was indeed a nice event. wish i could have stayed for more of it. lily did a great job organizing. and i agree about the underground art scene in shenzhen – it exists.

  6. Lily Fang avatar
    Lily Fang

    haha David,seems you already got some nice comments there!!well yeah i feel so very honored to garthering 10 talented and creative photographers to present their works and sharing stories behind photos.and yes I did invest lots of time and engergy for it!and it seems all worth it!! well defnitately we should invelve more these kind of event! ^_^

    thx all again for baring my bossy leadership and supporting me.:p

    1. Thanks Boss 😉

  7. Margaret avatar
    Margaret

    Great post. Enjoyed your pictures on Flickr too.

  8. Yeah, I agree it was a great night, nice to see that there is an art scene here!

  9. I hate the “nerves” as you do. Public speaking is not my bag, although I do a lot of it.

    It sounds like it was a good night, too bad I missed it. TW rocked, btw.

  10. Hello David,
    thanks for posting the article. I was very pleased to meet you and everyone else, hear the stories behind the pictures, exchange thoughts and get inspired. The diversity of the individual styles was particularly interesting and surprising to me.
    BTW: You looked pretty calm and confident to me, not nervous at all.
    Hope to meet you guys and girls again…
    Christian

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