ON THE SILK ROAD
hand-printed photographs by Kheng-Li Wee
12 -19 March 2005 @ ART FORUM

Landscape, Travel and the Sublime

The Silk Road is possibly one of the most evocative and romantic phrases ever to describe a geographic region. Coined first by German geographer Baron Von Richthofen in the 19th century, it encompasses in the mind vast and inhospitable deserts, tall snow-capped mountains, endless camel caravans filled with rare and expensive trading goods, prosperous oasis trading cities, rich cultural interchange, the frontier fortresses and cities of great empires, war, history, religion, commerce, nature.

I set out in early October 2004, during the all-too-brief desert autumn season, to encounter the grandeur, majesty and vastness of the Silk Road as it is today. Travelling by road and rail from the provincial capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Urumqi, the city closest to the geographical heart of the Asian landmass, to the provincial capital of Gansu province, Lanzhou, astride the upper bends of the Yellow River, the heartland of Chinese civilization, I sought to discover and experience a little of the transcendant power of natural landscape as well as the lives of the people who lived (and still live) among this beautiful but unforgiving harshness of nature.

Impressions which remain in my memory of the Silk Road:

- the bitter cold of the Tian Shan mountains
- once-great trading cities now in ruins
- the yellow sand and black gravel dunes of the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts
- remnants of great Buddhist cave temples
- the echoes of a temple bell amidst the mist-shrouded limestone gorges of the Upper Yellow River
- sharp contrasts between the deserts and the oases
- the unchanging agrarian lives of many of the inhabitants
- modern highways and railways joining drab industrial cities
- the ubiquity of modern travel in the form of hotels and tourists
- the richness and dynamism of the cultures which still flourish along this ancient route.

Most of all, the unique quality of the light along the Silk Road – sometimes sharp and clear, other times aglow with motes of dust, but always low angled, etching long shadows along the ground.

In approaching the wide expanses of the Silk Road photographically, it seemed particularly appropriate to employ the panoramic camera format, which captures a frame 1.5 times the width of a conventional 35mm camera frame. It was a particular challenge for me to adapt my “eye” to “seeing” in this way.
I chose to shoot only in black and white and to print all my images by hand as silver gelatin prints because I feel that there is a certain timeless quality and mystery about the landscapes and peoples along the Silk Road which could best be captured without the distraction of colour. Additionally, there is a textural quality and sense of depth possible in a silver print which gives it a special beauty. I print all my own silver gelatin prints and take pride and joy in the handcrafting of a print in the wet darkroom, particularly in this increasingly digital age.

All the photographs in this exhibition were made on a Hasselblad Xpan camera, with a 45mm f4 lens, on Ilford FP4 film. I wish to thank Helen Lim and Shriro Singapore, for their support.

Kheng-Li Wee

click here for short descriptions of the various locations on the Silk Road photographed by Kheng-Li Wee (PDF file)

The Artist

Kheng-Li Wee. Born 1971 Singapore. He was a member of the pioneer year, Art Elective Programme, The Chinese High School, Singapore. Studied Asian Studies and Fine Art at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, USA and photography at the highly selective Full-Time Programme at the International Center of Photography, New York, USA. He has had solo exhibitions in Singapore and has participated in group exhibitions in New York and Singapore. His works are in the collections of the International Center of Photography, New York, and the European House of Photography, Paris, as well as in numerous private collections in the USA and in Singapore. He teaches photography at Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore and is currently a freelance fine art and documentary photographer based in Singapore.