… Thierry Arensma works in the 4×5 inch view camera format using Polaroid film, manufacture of which ceased several years ago. After shooting, he retrieves the negative from these out-of-date films, and then uses them in the making of his photographic work. Contrary to standard practice, he does not neutralize it, thereby allowing the chemical process to act. He then captures a given moment of the process by scanning it : this is the photograph that we see, meanwhile the negative slowly deteriorates. This process, in addition to choices of angle and framing, gives the “HK” series an “bygone” aesthetic. The picture undergoes no digital touching-up, the chemicals on the film only exert an influence on the chroma. In other words, the image we see is in its untouched state, without any re-framing and entirely in its original format.

The technique used is a hint, an echo of what of the work is about : the question of traces, the trace that the chemicals leave behind on the negative, but also the trace of time which, in a town such as Hong Kong, does not materialise in a linear way but via stratification. Here, there is a juxtaposition of different universes, they cohabit: the traditional with the ultra-contemporary, 21st century architecture with colonial remains, and spiritual temples with temples to consumerism. But there is also a fascinating contrast of a different kind, shown clearly in the majority of the photographs: the cohabitation between the built-up, architecturally-designed, inhabited world and that of the natural world. For the truth is, the jungle is never very far away in this city, situated between land and sea, and which never ceases to push back the frontier with its resident natural environment as it continues to grow. Nature in its wildest state is to be found there, almost in the very heart of the city, amongst the buildings. Nature at its most persistant, imperious, and resistant.

The timeless and poetic atmosphere emanating from these photographs provides us with a counter-vision of Hong-Kong. The skyline is absent and there are no bright lights, nor frenetic, overflowing streets, nor neon signs. Instead, there is a strange feeling of a disused world, and we have the impression of being stuck in time, in a place beyond time’s reach. We are cut off from the economic realities of this city, which is however one of the world’s major financial centres.
Yet there is no question here of a backward-looking or illusionary, nostalgic view of a long-lost, fantastical Asia. In its place, this vision puts into perspective and questions modernity, as well as the place of the living in the city.

The beauty of these photographs undoubtedly stems from this strangeness arising from the unexpected encounter between matter and form. The result is a vision of the city which borders on the unreal. An urban fiction, a sort of retro-futuristic Metropolis…
an extension of what is real.

Marie Deparis-Yafil
Critic et curator