Ying Ang
- Text by Andrea Kurland
- Photography by Ying Ang
To celebrate Huck 46: The Documentary Photography Special II, our annual celebration of visual storytelling, we are having a Huck website takeover – Shoot Your World – dedicated to the personal stories behind the photographs we love.
In this regular series, Answers On A Postcard, we ask photographers to get existential and respond to a visual q&a with their images.
Fourth up is Australian-born photographer Ying Ang, whose new self-published photobook Gold Coast – which confronts the Pleasantville facade of her childhood home by marrying picket-fence suburban scenes with tales of drug-related crimes – is gaining prime position in bookstores and photo festivals since launching at the NY Art Book Fair on September 28.
Gold Coast, like much of Ying’s documentary work, casts a fine art lens on issues that simmer beneath the surface. After witnessing a murder as a wide-eyed teen, Ying has avoided memories of her childhood home but with this deeply personal project she’s tackling every demon and coming out on top. “It’s about the deep disparities between icons of safety and the knowledge of danger,” she explains.
Answers On A Postcard #4
What does home feel like?
Amorphous and undefinable.
What does faith look like?
Finding your icons and committing to them.
What’s your greatest fear?
This has been the easiest one so far. Intimacy.
What keeps you up at night?
Beaches, bonfires and bourbon will usually do it.
What helps you sleep?
Knowing that these bad b***ches have my back.
What’s the meaning of life?
Making the most of your moment in the sun.
Any vices?
Always trying to catch the impossible.
Ying Ang’s Gold Coast will feature at the Brighton Photo Biennial (October 4 – November 2, 2014), Scan Tarragona, Tarragona ( ) and Scan Tarragona, Barcelona (February 5 – February 27, 2015)
Buy the book directly from Ying Ang’s personal website and read her personal essay in Huck 46: The Documentary Photography Special II.
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