Nestled in the valley of vast Middle-earth legendarium, between
the Two Thumb Range and John in the heart of Southern Alps, New
Zealand never cease to impress. Picture perfect turquoise lake,
snow-capped mountains; this simple recipe has created a beauty
so rare with landscape so striking it deflates your breath.
This is the Mountains of the Middle-earth!
Jenn Wei makes photographs in digital and analogue. With a subtle minimalistic approach, his photos reference post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.
His photographs demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, he creates work in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found. The work is distant and taxonomic and a cool even-handed imagery is used.
His practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for maneuvering with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of photography: these meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. By exploring the concept of landscape in a nostalgic way, he investigates the dynamics of landscape, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits of spectacle based on our assumptions of what landscape means to us. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of our imagination.
His works establish a link between the landscape’s reality and that imagined by its conceiver. These works focus on concrete questions that determine our existence. Drives by the inspiration of David DuChemin, "Gear is good. Vision is better.
Awards 1. Moscow International Foto Awards 2014
Honorable Mention in Nature-Wildlife Non-Pro category
2. International Photography Awards 2014
Honorable Mention in Travel/Tourism Non-Pro category
Honorable Mention in Deeper Perspective Non-Pro category
Honorable Mention in Special/Micro Non-Pro category
Honorable Mention in Nature/Other Non-Pro category
3. I SHOT IT- Macro Photo Competition 2013- No. 6
Received the Mark of Excellence Award
