This is a photograph of art student Gabriel Chuen taken as part of my series "Colours". With Colours I hope to create a series of portraits of people from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, where composition and the use of a refined and varied, yet simple colour palette is applied to encourage audiences to view the sitters liberated to an extend from cultural and ethnic stereo-typing. When complete the photographs will form a colourful, egalitarian tableau of humanity.
It is people that are at the centre of my photographic enquiry: their vulnerabilities, uniqueness, complex emotional worlds and physical manifestations of the workings of their minds and souls, which inspire and engage me. Incorporating techniques of fragmentation and diffusion at the point of capture helps me to create new and engaging ways for audiences to view traditional subject matter, and also allows my subjects to experience themselves in new and unexpected ways. To date my work has been shown in Tokyo, Berlin, Cincinnati, Miami, Paducah, Kentucky and Bristol UK.
