Our readers picks #318, Vincent Curdy and Greg Mo are interested in familiar places. One takes us to another world by photographing the details of everyday life, while the other documents the upheavals in Cambodia.
Vincent Curdy
“I started to practice photography about twenty years ago, in black and white, with a focus on poetic abstraction. I then spent many hours, day and night, in the light of inactinic lamps”, says Vincent Curdy. Influenced by cinema, music and dance, the artist creates intuitive images. He sometimes lets himself be carried away by movement, and freezes the furrows of gestures or the spiraling of smoke with the help of his lens. But he also captures the motionless, the solitary, with a gentle melancholy. “The use of medium and large format, in film, allows me to obtain materials, textures and details so precise that they help me to compose an other world,” he confides. Although he remains a monochrome enthusiast, Vincent Curdy also recolours his pictures with “ideal and fake colours”. “I love this path which consists of starting from reality, moving away from it to come back to it, transformed,” he says.
© Vincent Curdy
Greg Mo
Greg Mo, a photographer based in Cambodia, offers thoughtful and striking documentary work. The Southeast Asian country has undergone radical upheaval in recent years. “In Cambodia, the middle class is booming, more and more projects are being created in response to this new demand,” he explains. Zoos, golf courses, holiday resorts… Many constructions are suddenly introduced into the daily life of the inhabitants, amazed by these brands coming from the West. Among these infrastructures, a monumental water park on the edge of the city of Phnom Penh, became the subject of Greg Mo’s latest project. “For a country that didn’t have modern infrastructures ten years ago, the park is surprising, he says, it’s a good example of how fast things are going here”. Surprised by the diversity of colours and scenes of life he observes, the photographer frantically shoots this giant creature, the “Multi-Million Water Park”.
© Greg Mo
Cover picture: © Greg Mo
