Kwan, Kevin

Kevin Kwan, New York, USA

Kevin Kwan, born in Singapore, is a graduate of Parsons School of Design.  His photographs have been exhibited internationally and are included in private and institutional collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.  Kwan is the author of the international bestselling novel Crazy Rich Asians.

My work involves investigations of places around the world that i find to be layered with paradoxes and hidden narratives. The „Rubicon“ series (2005) , for instances, concerns a neighborhood which is secretly the nexus of illegal drug production and trafficking in the Gulf Coast of the United States, while the „Woollahra“ series (2003) focuses  on a former working class Victorian neighborhood that has morphed into perhaps the most expensive real estate in Australia.
I am interested in exploring these specific locations subversively by shooting only at night  a low shutter speeds and putting the threshold of visibility within  the printing process. By re-imagining the colors, and obstructing and enhancing details, I seek to create images layered with ambiguities-cinematic vignettes of places that the viewer might discover emotionally rather than geographically.
Kevin Kwan 02-2007

Collections

Museum of Fine Arts Houston
Max Mara Corporate Collection
Joan Morgenstern Collection
Maira Kalman Collection
Normann-Lindegaard Collection